Code Name Nora

Is he just a flirty-girty?

2009-03-31T11:40:00.000-07:00

There are some sixteen men living in the Twilight Zone and fifty “odd” women. Most of the men are not in as good shape as their female counterparts. Several men are in wheelchairs, like Ralph, three have their wives with them, one is a known lecher, one hits the bottle regularly, and several are pretty vacant upstairs. This leaves slim pickings for any lady Zoner who might have an eye out for romance.

Obviously, Peggy is one such woman, first latching onto Fred, whom everyone else thought unattractive, and then Cass, who is attractive. Only she told Tillie the other day that Cass suffers from E.D. Tillie told this to Nora, after first cautioning Nora that Peggy had told her “not to tell anyone.”

“Oh, I won’t,” Nora promised. “It’s down the well.” (That well is getting pretty filled up.)

Only she thought Tillie said Cass suffered from V.D. “Hmm,” she said, “that must date back some years. Really, does he?”

“Yes, according to Peggy, but he’s going to take some medicine for it,” Tillie said.

“Golly, wonder where he got it. In service?”

“What are we talking about?” Tillie asked.

“I think we’ve had this conversation before,” Nora said. “It’s either my ears or your speech. You said Cass has V.D.”

“No, E.D.”

“E.D.? Oh, erectile dysfunction.”

“Yes,” Tillie said.

“Well, for heavens sakes, he’s like seventy-five, besides being diabetic. What does Peggy expect? She’s got to be the horniest old gal I’ve ever heard of.”

“Yes, isn’t it wonderful,” Tillie said, her eyes gleaming.

“Hmph,” Nora said. She couldn’t quite picture Cass and Peggy… She didn’t want to go there.

“You are such an old bluenose,” Tillie said.

Nora sighed the “silent sway-back sigh,” as her kids used to call it, which meant her martyrish reaction to their transgressions. Privately, however, she was trying to reconcile Cass’ recent attentions to her and this news from Tillie. When told of Cass’ gifts on her doorstep, the éclair and banana, her daughter Anne had said “How phallic!”

The old coot! E.T. gifts?

She wished Tillie had not told her this “secret.” She definitely would not pass it on to anyone. Some things needed to stay in the well.

And she didn’t think Cass’ gifts were phallic. Else she wouldn’t have eaten them.

Tillie has gotten a car!

2009-03-24T12:33:00.000-07:00

Her pill of a son, Matt, took her out one day to an auto dealer’s where he arranged the lease of a brand-new one! Tillie, who has ever bemoaned her virtual imprisonment behind the walls of the Zone and reliance upon others for errand-running and simple cruising, namely Nora, was flabbergasted. The car is a Subaru. She’s already run the battery down twice and had to have the repair man from the auto dealer come out to jump it. She’d left the make-up mirror light on. But she actually drives like an old lady. Nora has been with her a couple of times and thought to herself never again. But she doesn’t want to deny her friend the pleasure of taking other people around. The funny thing is, however, after being without a car for so long, Tillie confided, a bit grumpily, that she “really hasn’t anyplace” she needs or wants to go. Nora has assured her, “just wait.” She’ll think of something.

Several other new things have taken place in the Zone. For game night now, the big play is Mexican Train. It uses domino-like tiles. One-legged Ralph is the major domo of this, being about the only one who’s read the fine-print directions written by an Asian teenager. But at least keeping an eye on the four or five women playing with him keeps him too busy to talk people’s arms off. However, Sara and Nora still prefer Scrabble. Nora has still not been able to best Sara who keeps making those combo plays that net her double-digit scores.

They have some new people also. This is good because, as mentioned earlier, a few of the old have slipped beyond the purplish twilight: a tiny lady in her nineties who always dressed in pink, whose carefully-coifed hair was like the hair on a doll that was never played with. She passed away in her sleep, apparently. A good way to go. (If one is found fairly soon, and she was.) And another very sweet woman, Dixie Dean, is still in a rehab place, and it’s rumored she won’t be coming back. Instead, they have a brash newcomer, Frona, who has muscular legs in her shorts. Complete with Reboks.

Tillie, of course, wears shorts that would fit Nora’s five-year-old granddaughter Emma. Last week the two of them visited the local thrift store on senior discount day and Tillie bought some white shorts that were a size 0. Nora told her they were way too small but the stubborn one wouldn’t listen. Nor does she ever try anything on. So later that day, when a bunch of them were in the lobby, Nora played a trick on her friend. She went into Tillie’s and saw she was asleep in her recliner. The sack from the thrift was in the kitchen where she’d dropped it. Nora reached in and took out the tiny white shorts and went into the lobby to show them off.

It was kind of mean but funny. Shiko grabbed the white shorts away from Nora and, holding them against herself, ran around to demonstrate. Some Zoners laughed; people like Sara (there aren’t many) tsked a bit, but overall it was amusing. Then Nora returned the shorts to Tillie’s sack, and she never knew. Days later, Nora asked how come she never wore the white shorts. Tillie, now having a car, muttered that she’d had to take them back. Ho, ho, coulda told ya. But Nora didn’t say this.

She tried to imagine her own grandmother, in the 1940s, if she had, for example, the Grandmother’s Club over for tea, they all in their voluminous Bemberg sheer flowered dresses, funny hats, and white gloves, and Mom-Mom came out in the size zero white shorts. Of course, Mom-Mom would’ve needed several zeros behind the number. But it was beyond Nora’s powers of imagination to visualize.

Spilling the beans

2009-03-17T15:29:00.000-07:00

Secrets are almost impossible to keep in the Twilight Zone, and it’s really cruel to ask people to. For example, here’s what happened this past week.

During their Thursday night Scrabble game, Sara confided to Vera and Nora that she had some good news and some bad news. “The good news,” she said, “is that Zenia (her next door neighbor) told me that she’s moving.”

“That is good,” the other two said.

Sara has long put up with Zenia’s secondhand smoke which comes from her balcony onto Sara’s and then finds its way via her fresh air intake into her apartment. Also, Zenia is one of those who never seem to go to bed like normal folks, but is up at all hours. She’s cooking, apparently, for she slam-bangs pots and pans around at two a.m. Plus, she constantly knocks on nearby doors to ask for ice. Why she needs so much ice is not known.

“Well, what is the bad news?” Nora asked.

“The bad news,” Sara said, “is that Zenia’s decided not to move.”

“Ohh,” the other two commiserated.

“Now please don’t tell anyone because Zenia asked me not to,” Sara said.

After a long moment, Nora asked, “What can’t we tell? That Zenia’s moving? Or that she’s not moving?”

“I don’t know. Both, maybe. I guess that she was. Anyway, that’s what she said.”

“Well, it’s like over now,” Nora said.

“For the time being,” Sara said.

A few days later, Nora was having a senior coffee at McDonald’s (42 cents) with Small Betty and Peggy. They naturally asked each other what was new.

Nora said, “I heard Zenia may move.”

“Hey, good news.”

“Except later she changed her mind.”

Their two faces fell.

“But don’t tell anyone,” Nora said.

The next day, Sara called Nora. In the course of the conversation, she said, “Small Betty just called me and she mentioned Zenia’s possibly moving.”

“Really?” Nora said. “Gosh, Betty absolutely knows everything that happens here, doesn’t she?”

“She does because you told her,” Sara said.

Nora did a quick flashback. “Oh, I guess I did.”

“And I asked you not to.”

“Oops. Sorry. That part must’ve gone in one ear and out the other. But that it went in one ear was good, ha, ha.” She was jocularly referring to her deafness.

She apologized again for spilling the beans on Zenia, who wasn’t going to move, apparently.

“That’s okay,” Sara said. “For after all, Zenia told me not to tell and I told you.”

Nora didn’t mention that Peggy had also been with them at McDonald’s. Caution was the better part of valor. Besides, Peggy didn’t hold thoughts very long.

“How are we leaving this?” she asked Sara.

“I’m not sure,” Sara said. “But I’ll let you know if Zenia changes her mind again.”

Game Night

2009-03-10T09:56:00.000-07:00

Last night, six of them played a new game that Tillie, who doesn’t ordinarily join them, got at the Thrift store: “Trivia in the Twentieth Century.”

There were Tillie, Small Betty, Shelta, Nora, Sara, and Vera. None of them could remember how to play the old Trivia, the mechanics of it, going around the board after throwing the one “die” which they kept calling “dice,” but it was the questions that were ridiculous. They were so obscure that none of them, except once or twice, Sara and Nora, could come up with the answer. So the game-playing dissolved into histrionics. One of the questions had been “What is the most important piece of equipment an athlete has to wear?” None of the old gals thought of “jock strap” but that was the answer. So dangle that before six bored old ladies and what are you going to get? Titters, laughs, and funny stories.

Nora told one, and it was true.

She began: “I decided that the sound of my own snoring was waking me up, and that I snored because my mouth fell open during the night.”

In casting about for some way to keep her mouth closed, short of duct tape, she lit upon a jock-strap. Not that she had one to hand since her kids were long-gone. But she bought a small one, a bit red-facedly, from a sports emporium, and that night, put her idea to work. Who knew but that maybe she was on the cusp of a great invention that would solve a vexatious problem that had plagued mankind for centuries?

Too bad she didn’t take a self-photo, and a good thing she lived alone. Somehow, she arranged the jock-strap around her head, looping straps over her ears, so that she could moor her chin in the pivotal point of the equipment that boxers, wrestlers, high-jumpers, and football players use in quite a different way on quite a different part of their anatomies.

Of course, the old gals were laughing, and it was good to hear Small Betty practically sob. Even Sara was having a spasm of mirth. Shelta, beside Nora at the table, had to remove her glasses to wipe them. Tillie, while laughing, fixed Nora with a baleful gaze as if Nora were making it all up. Nora even said, “You know I couldn’t make this up…”

“Did it work?” they asked.

Actually, Nora couldn’t remember. How can one if one is asleep? The contraption probably slipped off during the night. She remembered only trying it once.

Their game degenerated from then on. Small Betty, the most innocent of them all since she’d never been married or had children, and had led a chaste Catholic schoolgirl life, read a pretend question from a card: “What are the many uses of a jock-strap at night?”

Coming up is the weekly pot-luck which the new resident, Frona, has taken over and made her own project. But most people are glad because someone had to. The menu is brats and sauerkraut. Hope there will be some good German mustard to go along.

Also, coming up is the TGIF night, with drinks on the house, but, imagine, at 3 p.m.; the Big Birthday Party, and a bus ride to see a Habitat for Humanity house under construction, for which Zoners are making cookies for the workers.

Oh, by the bye: remember Cass, and the Cass and Peggy duo? Well, they’re still going around together but he has become rather attentive to Nora! Directing lots of remarks toward her. Provocative ones like “I dreamt about you last night.” Peggy has a small puzzled look on her face. (But that could be her encroaching senility.) What divvils are afoot? Not that Nora would…

But here’s a late bulletin: she opened the door this morning in her wrapper to get her morning newspaper and upon it in a plastic wrap was a frosted éclair and a note from “A Secret Admirer.” Zounds!

The "gift" of speech

2009-03-03T14:30:00.000-08:00

Last night five of them played Canasta: Sara, Small Betty, Shelta, Vera, and Nora. Nora was disappointed to see Shelta get off the elevator with Sara but hid her chagrin because, after all, one had to be pleasant and get along with everyone in the Twilight Zone. Besides, who was she to think she was any better than anyone? Except five people playing also meant they couldn’t do partners, which the usual four players preferred. Oh, well, live and let play.

It was one of those nights when no one had a very good hand, the cards didn’t seem to be shuffled thoroughly—only Sara and Shelta could shuffle because the others’ fingers were too stiff—and the same lame cards kept turning up, like fours, fives and sevens. Small Betty used her invention that Sara’s son had made for her in his woodworking shop—grooved boards that held her cards because her right hand didn’t work so well.

Again, Shelta made her small asides, such as “You’re going to give me something (discard) that I can use, aren’t you?” If she said it once she said it three times. But Nora, easily made grumpy by Shelta, held her peace. She had wretched cards—no bonus cards, one Caliente, and two or three wild cards, which was good, but only a pair of tens or Jacks, and soon enough, other people were melding the very cards she wanted to.

They talked about the impending visit of a woman named Gertrude who’d formerly lived there but had a stroke and had to go to a nursing home and then to her son’s because she needed constant care. Sara, who kept tabs on every human being within ten miles—or so it seemed—had kept in touch with Gertie even though the poor woman had lost some speech facility. It was Sara who’d arranged for the visit and tea party that was to be staged. Sara reported that Gertrude had regained “quite a bit of her talking ability except she sometimes has to pause to think of a word.” Well, most everyone living in the Zone had the same problem except Ralph, whom a minor stroke might’ve improved socially. But not to be wishing that off on anyone, except, to be honest, it did go through Nora’s mind briefly. Probably because she’d had a recent experience with Ralph during which she learned volumes of his personal life.

He kindly had offered to cut down a small table for her that she’d gotten from the thrift store. So last week he came to Nora’s door in his two-wheeled conveyance, balancing on his lap his Skil saw, measuring tape, and two large clamps.

He let himself down onto Nora’s carpet and began both to talk and to work. She sat with him to be of support and made a mental vow to be brave about listening to him go on…and on. But she didn’t want to distract him from the job at hand, shortening the small table’s legs exactly four inches so that it would fit better against one of her blue slip-covered chairs.

He had a strange way of measuring, using masking tape, but he did it, and made the cuts, all the while talking. His marriage, his children, the way his wife, Maureen, treated him (not well, but then, to live with a talker must incite frequent thoughts of murder), and on and on. Soon, the little stubs Ralph cut off were in Nora’s hands. She held them up just for fun. They didn’t match! Two were longer than the others.

The table was still upturned on the carpet. “Uh, Ralph,” she said, “look at these, they aren’t the same length.”

Ralph turned up the table and set it on its amputated legs. It listed to one side.

“I’ll be darned,” Ralph said. “How did that happen?”

I don’t know how but I know when, Nora thought; when Maureen took off for the weekend that time leaving you with no food in the house, etc., etc.

There was nothing for it but to trim off the two longer legs which Ralph did, still not shutting up, although Nora by now had set her mouth in a grim line. And so, finally, the small side table stood up levelly, a bit shorter than planned. Nora thanked Ralph, helped him gather up his tools, swept up the sawdust, and saw the handyman to the door. “Oh, your measuring tape,” she said, putting it atop the carpenter’s apron he wore, underlining “measuring” with heavy sarcasm which of course Ralph wouldn’t get because he lived in his own total world. Yet, she was still grateful to him and easily forgave him once he’d left. She surveyed her table, snugged up now against the chair. It was fine; it would do.

Oh, Ralph had asked her one question during the course of their “conversation.” It was, “Where did you grow up?” She had rushed to jump into discourse. “Oklahom—“ but she was quickly cut off before the word got completed.

Now she pondered the coming visit of Gertrude who was recovering from a stroke and regaining her powers of speech. Somehow, somewhere, there was a lesson in all this for Gertrude had also been a marathon talker. Poetic justice?

No, Nora would not think that. She was happy Gertie was recovering. And coming to visit.

Shelta: (for the fourth time at the card table): “I know you’re going to give me something I can use.”

Nora, to herself: yes, a frontal lobotomy.

Laughter, the best medicine

2009-02-25T05:40:00.000-08:00

The conversation in Tillie’s apartment began somewhat like this:

Nora said that her daughter Anne had been over to visit and that she said she had a urine infection and the medicine the doctor gave her made her sick to her stomach. Then Nora said to Tillie, “Have you ever had one and do you know how to get over one?”

Present also, sitting beside Nora on Tillie’s big plush velour couch was the new woman, Wilma, who was very nice and sweet.

Tillie said, “Yes, I’ve had one and I do know how to get over one. But you won’t like it.”

“How do you?” Nora asked.

“Warm urine,” Tillie said.

“Oh, yuck!” Nora exclaimed, as did Wilma. They laughed slightly horrifiedly.

Tillie nodded her head adamantly. “Anne should try it.”

“Ewww, no,” Nora said. “She’d freak out if I told her that.”

“It works,” Tillie said. “But it has to be warm.”

“Well, it is warm when it comes out. But who would ever do that?” She grimaced.

”My mother and grandmother did and it worked,” Tillie said.

By this time Nora and Wilma were rather convulsing. “You mean you drink it?” Nora asked.

“Noooo!” Tillie scowled. “You don’t drink it. You shoot it in your ear with a medicine dropper.”

Nora and Wilma practically exploded with the kind of laughter women laugh at the unspeakable.

“In your ear!” Nora repeated. “What does that have to do with down here,” and she indicated her nether region. Wilma, who was rather a roly-poly, was chortling so she was about to roll off the couch like a ball-bug.

Tillie frowned and said, “What are we talking about?!”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about an ear infection.”

“’Urine infection,’ I said!”

“Oh--!” Tillie said. “I thought you said ‘ear—‘”

Nora and Wilma wiped their eyes. “It’s still gross,” Nora said. “Oh, I can hardly wait to tell Sara. And everyone else. I am going to get some mileage out of this story. How come you don’t wear your danged hearing aids?”

At this point Tillie’s doorbell rang. It was Small Betty going around with fresh-made tamales to give to people. Nora accepted a plastic baggy of them even though when someone brought them before to the Twilight Zone she hadn’t particularly liked them because they were too strong for her Gringo palate. But she’d frittered away her time in Tillie’s place and hadn’t anything for dinner. Maybe if she smothered them with salsa and sour cream they’d taste better.

Bette was also delivering some upstairs so they rode up in the elevator together and met Vera on the third floor.

Nora began, “I was telling Tillie about my daughter having a…”

Ah, laughter. It smoothes all wrinkles, soothes all ills, heals all ruptures.

Retribution

2009-02-17T14:24:00.000-08:00

Nora went to a memorial service Sunday for the husband of one of her bridge club ladies, Sylvia, and it was like reentering the past if the past were some kind of a haunted house with distorting mirrors, ghostly shapes, and elusive images. Because almost every one of the two or three hundred people there—yes, it was huge, spilling out of doors on both sides of the meeting place—looked as though they were extras on a set of “The Night of the Living Dead.”

Old, old, old. When one doesn’t see people for three to four to five to ten years and everyone is pushing eighty, the changes time wreaks are startling. Cruel, too. The man who died, Charles, had been 85. His widow, Nora’s friend, Sylvia, was the same age. She looked like the Indian from that movie long ago with Dustin Hoffman who kept going out to the butte or wherever for the Great Spirit to take him but it never came. Sylvia was bent like she’d stood in a gale-force wind too long, and brown as a piece of jerky, about as lean and fleshless. Her hair was white and looked fake but it wasn’t. She had dark areas about her eyes caused by the bony sockets of her face sinking in deeper. Yet her spirit seemed to remain indomitable which is often the case with people who’ve lived many, many, winters.

Another old friend of Nora’s was pointed out to her by someone, and Nora almost said that couldn’t be her. But there was something recognizable, even though the features of her face were worn like a scrap of cloth left out to flap on the line. Her body was ungainly, like a shipping package that had been abused. She stood with the help of a cane. Nora went up to her. Her name was Mamie. “Do you remember me?” Nora asked, and Mamie croaked back, “Oh, of course, how are you?”

So they visited, although Nora was distracted by the sprout of hairs on Mamie’s chin and wished she’d thought to bring a tweezers. And a strange thing about eyes—they fade so, even brown ones.

The next person from her past Nora met was a woman who’d scared the living heck out of her when they both were younger. A wealthy, snobbish, withering type of person with whom Nora had never been able to coexist at numerous meetings throughout the years at cocktail parties, ski outings, country-club sightings. A fire-breathing dragon. She was standing alone, looking strangely bowed, in a muted plaid jacket and camel-colored trousers.

Nora went up to her. “Is this who I think it is?” she’d leaned by now to say as an opener.

The woman, Sophia, cackled something as Nora peered into her bowed face. Her head drooped like a heavy blossom gone bye. Indeed, it was the very same old dowager who’d made the young Nora feel gauche and socially inept. Nora chatted at her, with a newly found glibness, but Sophia didn’t say a whole lot. It suddenly came to Nora that perhaps or even surely she wasn’t exactly all mentally there. Nora felt mingled emotions at this realization: a shard of pity but also, it must be confessed, a shaft of glee to see her adversary so reduced. (Nora later felt appropriately guilty.)

So the afternoon went, filled with faces and figures of bent, warped people from the past, who by some fluke or mishap of the grim reaper’s schedule, hadn’t shown up on his rolodex yet. Nora shuddered a bit inwardly. She gloated a bit inwardly. Because she felt herself to be haler and heartier. At least upright, mentally present, not needing the oxygen tubes that snaked out of many of the nostrils she’d seen or the appurtenances for walking. But she scolded herself. But not too severely. Because she remembered how these very same people had intimidated her so, some fifty years ago when she’d tried to move among them as their equal. Now the years had meted out their revenge, the playing field had been leveled; they’d been finally reduced from their loftiness.

But, driving home, she felt little jubilation. She recognized in herself the smugness that, in her saner moments, she deplored. She’d received many comments this day upon how “well” she looked. But that could change. This very night, as is told in the good book, her life could be taken from her. She could suffer a stroke, a cerebral hemorrhage, a heart attack, a convulsion, a fall, or collide at a corner with another vehicle. So she should not take pride in the fact that her enemy had been laid low. Her own time would come. She did reflect that when she died, the gathering for her would be very small, nothing to rival today’s multitude. Because she hadn’t so many friends and acquaintances but also because she’d presumably be in her high nineties.

It’s all in the genes, she decided, returning home, anticipating the watching of a couple of Sunday night TV shows and having something nice to eat for supper. And, of course, her pony of beer.

Magic foo-foo powder

2009-02-11T07:23:00.000-08:00

Tillie has been sick. She’s had pneumonia and spit up blood, which horrified Nora. She eventually went to the doctor but told Nora she’s had pneumonia several times before and has been coughing up blood for years.

“Good Lord!” said Nora, “why don’t you take better care of yourself?”

Tillie said she didn’t much give a hoot, as she lit up another cigarette.

“Are you depressed?” Nora asked.

“Always,” Tillie said.

“Ohhh—what can I do?”

“Nothing. Just don’t lecture me.”

So Nora didn’t any more. But she worried about her friend, who, in the number of days seen and been with in the last several years, was one of long standing. This was because in the Twilight Zone, one saw people practically daily, like they were family members. A crazy, mixed-up family, but nonetheless, people you were stuck with for good or ill. But of course Nora didn’t feel her relationship with Tillie was an ill one; but, quite possibly, a peculiar one. Because in the bigger world, the life that was gone for them now, they likely might not have been friends. They were so different.

For one thing, Nora, as Tillie often enough told her and anyone else within earshot, was “healthy as a horse.” Well, she did eat her oats most mornings for breakfast, steel-cut ones that required longer cooking than the impatient Tillie would bother with. The point was that Nora had always taken good care of herself while Tillie—who was seven years younger than Nora--seemed to do everything that wasn’t healthful. Her diet was heavy on prepared foods, short on fruits and vegetables, topped off with Oreos or M&Ms. And the smoking, of course. Cigarettes were not called “coffin nails” for nothing. And, also, a certain attitude of mind.

Tillie met old age with a smack in its face. She did not want to be old and did not gracefully embrace the changes in her body, mind, and spirit that an accumulation of years brings. During her illness, which seemed to last at least two weeks, Tillie lost weight. Nora commented on this. She did not say though that Tillie still had her slight, flabby paunch, which she did.

“Damn right I’ve lost weight,” Tillie said, “and I’m going to lose some more to get rid of this stomach.”

Nora sighed over the hardheadedness of her friend. No matter how much weight an older person lost, the old tummy would still be there, like a spider’s abdomen, because the muscle tone one had in youth was gone. She wondered anew how Tillie had ever reached the age of seventy-five; well, kicking and screaming every year of the way.

In contrast, some Zoners aged gracefully, seemingly fully entering into what the poet called “The Best” (that was yet to be). The Golden Years, as younger people called them. Perhaps the Leaden Years would be a better name. Or the Lump of Coal Years.

But Nora didn’t feel this way. Some beneficent attitude had taken her over so that she felt better than she’d ever felt as a younger person. What was there not to like about old age? (If one is healthy as a horse?)

She had all the time in the world to do whatever she cared to do or to do nothing. She had no more financial worries because of her social security and her small nest egg. She no longer “burned at white heat” as she’d used to raising children, pleasing a husband, getting along with contemporaries, keeping a house, nurturing fruitless ambitions, holding onto her looks, leaving footprints on the sands of time.

None of these things bothered her now. She slept and ate well, had people to be with and activities to partake of. Her figure and face were not all that bad, her kids did not distress her so much, they even seemed to take a protective attitude toward her at times that touched her, and her mind seemed to be as good as ever unless she was fooling herself.

Yes, by and large, except for Tillie, most Zoners seemed content. But then it suddenly came to Nora that that could be because of some magic foo-foo powder, like in Disney movies, that settled upon old folks; shimmering gold flakes that put them into a beatific trance.

Well, if that was so, let it be; let it rain down upon her.

Purple is back! (At least intermittently)

2009-02-04T08:59:00.000-08:00

A lot of changes have taken place in the Twilight Zone since Nora and her companions were last heard from, in April of ‘08. Several new people have come to replace those who’ve left, for one reason or the other: two to go into assisted living, railing bitterly at being “consigned”; a couple of others because even an assist to living could not keep them from entering the darkness outside the Zone. Perhaps they railed too. And a few have slipped more cogs.

The carpet has been cleaned, the walls repainted (a weird grey color), Shiko has celebrated her mysterious birthday—she never will tell her age, and of course her hair is still obsidian black. Tillie has wheels! (And more about this later, to be sure, since she still does not know her directions and Nora has to draw her maps) but the biggest and most far-reaching change has been the arrival of a new manager! And that has been fraught with peril.

She’s already received a nickname—the “Goosestepper.” Nora came up with this and it was quickly adopted by her small band of rebels, except the ever-saintly Sara. In fact, to tell all of the truth, sadly Sara and Nora have had a monstrous falling-out, to the latter’s intense dismay. Sara’s feelings about the matter are not exactly known. But to live halfway easily and pleasantly in the Zone requires détente, always; therefore, things are not what they seem on the surface.

These under-the-surface things will be explored in Nora’s blog, which she is reactivating, hopefully. She hopes some of her old readers will come back. And that she can come up with something interesting for them to read with their morning coffee. But at her advanced age now she cannot promise an everyday appearance. That is for younger, more energetic people of whose number, despite rumors to the contrary, she is not one. More likely, she will post weekly.

Oh—almost forgotten! To mention the most significant newcomer besides the Goosestepper manager: a woman named Frona. She is significant because she’s been here only a short while, like two or three months, and she’s already taking over! And has her cliques!

Frona’s close to eighty, with piercing blue eyes, so blue one thinks they are colored contacts, but they’re not. They look kind of like zircons. And she flashes them about. She’s ramrod-straight, not heavy, but with the tummy that’s inescapable at this age.

Frona has tangled with a few people in the Zone who were used to running things, like the every Wednesday pot luck. Like Ralph. His constant stream of verbiage has been all but dried up. And when on the next day people in the lobby might say, “Oh, wasn’t that nice last night, everything was so good,” Frona will thank them! As if she had been the hostess!

She’s abrogated hugs in the joint, too. That is, she gives them out freely but rather dictatorially, if that makes sense. She “launches” them. That is, someone will be standing in proximity to her and all of a sudden, “Wham!” They’ve been hugged by Frona. Rather like having a pie thrown in the face, the surprise element of it.

Nora was recently the recipient of a Frona hug on the occasion of her leaving to go to the funeral of a relative out-of-town. At this time, she was barely acquainted with the lady. Besides, Nora has a thing about hugging. It should be somewhat expected and reciprocal. Also, Frona kind of “casts off” people after hugging them, some reflex action of her arm, probably, like a billiard ball sent ricocheting into a side pocket.

It does feel good to be back. Nora hopes to hear from you.

All is quiet in the Twilight Zone

2008-04-02T08:39:00.000-07:00

Nora has run out of things to say and the desire to say them. So she is going to take a leave of absence because she hates to say goodbye. And she may be back. Actually, she has some other ideas she wants to develop and she feels unable to do both. She might start another blog or she might throw caution to the winds and strike out on the long journey of writing a novel.

So it’s time for a few confessions. Nora (not her real name) is a 36-year-old mother of four young children, aged 2 to 10 years. Her husband is an officer in a tank corps around Fallujah, in Iraq. She writes this blog at night when the kids are in bed. She gets her ideas from her grandmother who lives in a retirement home. Her name is, what else, but Nora.

Oh, her real name? It’s Sara. (Only she’s not as good as the other Sara.)

She hopes the few devoted readers she has won’t think badly of her. She does empathize strongly with old people. She hopes her readers don’t tell her not to slam the door behind her when she leaves.

April Fool! (a day late)

Had you there for a moment, didn’t she? Not about taking a recess but being 36. She wishes! Nora is, and has been all along, and will continue to be, who she is, which is an old lady. Right now, 82 and counting.

If she decides to start another blog, it will be listed here on CNN, which she’s leaving up for posterity. And if she decides to do a novel, she might also post some of her travails. Whatever it’s going to be, she’d better get a move on.

So, A bientot, sayonara, ciao, see ya lata alligata!

P.S. She certainly has appreciated all the encouragement and comments she’s received here.

Nora has a new neighbor

2008-03-31T08:37:00.000-07:00

Nora’s 90-year-old neighbor, Cleo, who took a fall and lay there all night until her daughter came the next day, has moved to an assisted living place. She was a very nice lady. So now Nora has a new neighbor, a man. His name is one of those double first names so she is bound to call him by the wrong one first. Thomas George or William James or something like that. He looks to be in his mid-seventies and wears a golfing hat. He also drives a nice-looking SUV which he garages ($70 more per mo). The scoop from Tillie is that he’s a widower. All Nora knows is that he is incredibly shy. She met him twice in the hallways and he could hardly say a word to her and kept his eyes slightly down. Maybe he’s just deaf or something. He is fairly nice-looking.

Oops! A funny thing happened this morning. Nora awoke early as usual and went out into the kitchen to turn on her coffee machine which she fixes the night before, wearing only her skimpy cotton nitie. Her kitchen window and her new neighbor’s face each other on a slant because both apartments are on a corner, hers facing east and his west. Well, you’d have to see the building to understand this. Anyway, both Nora and James or George usually keep the blinds on the windows closed out of consideration for one another’s privacy.

Except yesterday evening fixing her supper Nora had opened hers wider than usual to let in a little fading daylight. And it was still that way this morning. So there she was, bustling about early, half-way falling out of her nitie up top, sleepy-like, yawning, when she notices her new male neighbor’s blind is also more open than usual. And his kitchen light is on this early—5:15 am—as well. And he is in his kitchen making his coffee, it looks like. And, dang, if they can’t see each other! Only he’s fully clothed. She kind of has a glimpse of a startled expression on his face before his blind goes tightly shut.

Oh, no, did he catch a peek at her ample boobs?!! What will he think, that she’s trying to vamp him? Single men here in the Twilight Zone have got to be careful because they’re outnumbered three to one. If she sees him in the hallway today will he be shyer than usual and keep his eyes down? Will she?

And what about tomorrow morning, same time, same place? Will their respective blinds be half ajar again? And what will he be expecting to see? Is Nora getting a little addled in her old age?

Wait until she tells Tillie about this!

This is for Kenju

Come on, Bette, look back at Nora (on right). Do you know
she has your cigarette butt palmed?
Tulsa, OK 1943

Zone gets a face-lift

2008-03-28T08:00:00.000-07:00

There have been some changes made in the Twilight Zone. The most obvious, seen when you first come in the door, is new furniture in the lobby! Yep, the management sprung for some pretty nice stuff: big couch, matching loveseat, two occasional chairs, two rockers and two club chairs in the entryway where people sit waiting to be picked up. The colors are beiges, browns, and off-white. Also, a big rug for the center that sits on the old carpeting (which was recently cleaned even though unknown persons have already managed to spill something on it). The rug is pretty jazzy for the Zone. It’s geometric shapes, white, brown, tan. All in all, the old place looks pretty good. Oh, and the walls have been painted. A color so neutral that no one can decide if it’s beigy-grey, grey-green, oyster white or what. But it looks nice. However, someone has managed to bump their Rollator into it by the doorway. Oh, well, it takes a heap of living to make a retirement house a home.

Now, who will be first to spill coffee and get crumbs into the recesses of the new furniture? Just kidding. The Zoners are proud of their new stuff. Of course, it was about time; the old looked like it had been there decades; except the building is only six or seven years old. Susan, their manager, announced early and often that the old furniture would be auctioned off with silent bidding. As if any of that big, boxy stuff, upholstered in Herculon, would fit into anyone’s apartment. Or that anyone would want it after being sat upon and perhaps expired upon by so many people. One wooden rocker was reportedly sold. A big truck from the Salvation Army was seen outdoors a day after the very silent auction.

There are several new people, too. Carrie, the lady who uses lard in her cake icings, (it is hoped she’ll not bring any more to pot lucks), and a new man on three where Cleo used to live, next to Nora Jane. She has scarcely laid eyes upon him. Tillie has scoped him out and reports he is “tall and trim” but seems very shy. The rumor is that he’s a recent widower. Nora has determined she will be a nice neighbor but not overly friendly so he won’t get the right idea. Err, she meant to say wrong idée. Freudian slip.

Sara has been away visiting friends of whom she has legions across the country, and Nora and others have missed her sweet, sane presence. She should be back in a day or so. Peggy and Cass continue to act like an old married couple. Tillie and Nora wonder what they talk about. She has accepted that his heart belongs to another, sob, sob. She has now seen him without his baseball cap on and he is bald as a newborn. Not that she would mind that.

She found a great pressure cooker at the Store Sunday, a huge one capable of cooking up a mess of victuals to feed a family of six. Now she has to decide what messes she’s going to make. Hasenpfeffer? Sweet ‘n sour pork? Short ribs with sauerkraut? Mustard pot roast? Chicken and Dumplings? Not very bloody likely.

This is all terribly interesting. She’s avoiding starting that novel. But she so loves to write. It’s like a daily letting of blood, the crimson drops on fresh white space in her computer—hey, write in red?!—but once written, it’s fun to edit and the only way to be able to do that is put the bloody words down in the first place. Perhaps she’s watching too much TV; well, thankfully, the summer season will be on, her regular programs will take a break.

Umm, umm, umm. (Nora’s mantra, when she doesn’t know what else to say.)

Nora's scrap bag

2008-03-26T08:39:00.000-07:00

Easter is Sara’s favorite day. She had dinner at her daughter’s and made a dip from whipped cream, mayonnaise, rum, and honey, surrounded on a platter with apple and orange slices, grapes, and pineapple. Nora went to her daughter Anne’s and took an angel pie she made. Whipped cream with German chocolate reveled through it in a meringue-pecan shell. Tillie went with her son Matt and his girlfriend to a bar and drank beer and came back slightly stewed. Nora talked to her briefly in the lobby. Tillie told her that Matt and his girl “got into a terrible fight.”

“Why?” Nora asked.

Tillie shook her head and moaned. “I don’t knooooww. She is so bipolar.”

The big rummage sale is the first week in May. Nora has been asked to make a carrot cake to donate to the sale booth. Tillie is aiming to sell some things from her bottomless trunk; Sara’s daughter has a mess of stuff from her house she’ll bring over. Nora is considering going to the Store and buying trinkets to resell for more.

The management wants them to donate their proceeds to some helping hand agency but Tillie said, “Heck-fire no, I’m keeping mine.”

Speaking of the Store, Nora made some good purchases lately. A pair of wide-leg pants, high-water length (which is just above ankle length) in a great splashy blue and white flower print. Well, one would have to see them. With them she will wear a navy top, purchased for hard cash from the Mart of the Wal.

Nora’s next-door neighbor, Cleo, who’s almost 90 and fell recently and broke a hip, is not going to come back but go to a nursing home. So Nora will be getting a new neighbor. She said to Manager Susan that she was putting in her order: “Six foot two, eyes of blue, seventy something, no senility.” Susan laughed and repeated it to the maintenance man, Jose, who was out doing something to the bulletin board. Susan chortled evilly. Nora thought, oh, dear, she will put in someone who’s deaf and plays his TV loud or is loony.

Speaking of falling, Julia, the lady with only one leg, fell out of her wheelchair the other day taking a corner too fast outdoors, actually, coming down a driveway, and she broke it! When Tillie told Nora this, Nora said, “You mean she broke her one good leg?”

“No, the other one,” Tillie said.

She is so not funny.

When Nora awoke this morning and went into the living room and started to close the window that was open a crack, she put her face in a pot of tender green leaves in the shamrock plant. It had white flowers on it and looked so healthy and fresh she borrowed from its spirit.

Big birthday party

2008-03-24T08:21:00.000-07:00

This was held Friday for all the March birthdays. Nora had grandiosely offered to make a cake; from scratch. Fortunately, she was joined by Freida, Sara, and a new resident, Carrie. So they had enough cake to go around even though more of the Zoners turned out than usual. But there were a few problems along the way.

Sara, one for gracious touches, made a creation out of sponge cake soaked with Grand Marnier, put together with whipping cream, shaved chocolate, cherries, and almonds. It had to sit overnight in the fridge. She put it together Thursday, little suspecting the pitfalls she would encounter.

Freida, an old farmwoman who knows what she’s doing, made a 9x12 apple-spice cake frosted with mocha icing. It turned out well, moist and delicious. Carrie, the new lady, had said she’d made many a cake and was some kind of an amateur decorator. But she suffered a migraine two days before and could not grocery-shop. Sara offered to pick up the things she might need. “And for the frosting, powdered sugar…do you need butter?”

“No,” Carrie said, “I have plenty of lard.” Gulp. Sara said nothing. Lard in the frosting? She had to tell Nora who made a face. “No good deed goes unpunished.”

This was further true for Sara. For when she unmolded her creation Friday morning, it fell apart! Nora probably would’ve skewered it together with toothpicks, to be removed before serving, but Sara is too conscientious. She called bakeries—two days before Easter--and located a cake to buy which set her back $20. When she returned to her car, she’d received a traffic ticket! Another $20. To say nothing of the expensive ingredients in the Grand Marnier cake.

Nora put off making her cake until Friday morning just hours before the party. She’d
been inspired to make a German Chocolate Cake after seeing the picture of one on
whiteleesfood.blogspot.com by Peggy in Scotland. Not knowing if Peggy is Highland enough, Nora had to adjust for high altitude. It was slightly labor intensive what with separating the eggs and cooking the icing and all.

The home-made cake party was a big success. Hardly a crumb remained. Entertainer Harry played the oldie tunes on his electronic keyboard, and all that was missing was Birdie’s dancing. Inez, the other solo dancer, didn’t dance because she’s recuperating from a fall in which she broke her shoulder. (Her bones are like porcelain.) But she was at the party, in her golfing hat.

Crabby Molly came up to Nora afterwards and said that Nora’s cake was the best she’d eaten in a hundred years. Which is not much of an exaggeration given Molly’s advanced age.

As to whether the feat will be repeated next month, peut-etre.

Nora did not taste the lard-iced cake so cannot report on it. But it was eaten, all of it.

Tillie bites the dust

2008-03-21T05:14:00.000-07:00

Tillie has told Nora that her recent check-up at the doctor’s shows something suspicious in her lungs. She’s to have follow-up x-rays at a specialist’s.

Nora winced at this news. Although it isn’t unexpected because Tillie has inhaled those coffin nails since she’s been a teenager and still does. They visited a bit and then Nora left, shaking her finger at Tillie as she picked up a cigarette to light.

Nora hasn’t been able to get it out of her mind. She’s even envisioned a worst-case scenario (not that she wanted to but her mind is just like that):

Tillie has the big CA. And she’s refused to have chemo and is just going to tough it out. Everyone is devastated. Except it’s not general knowledge yet; only a few know, like Shiko and Crabby Molly and Small Bette and Nora. Nora has told Sara however because she tells Sara everything.

Nora is sad but also philosophical. How can one rail against the inevitable? The poet’s words, “Do not go quietly into that dark night” don’t make a lot of sense. “Fight, fight against the ending of the light” is pretty futile. Nora’s feelings are closer to Robert Browning’s “Let there be no weeping at the bar when I put out to sea.” Or Tennyson’s, “Twilight and evening bell and then the darkness.” Because the darkness is where all the Zoners who are here now will be within five or ten years. Including hers truly.

Nora will hope for her friend an easy passing; ideally, in her sleep, or in her old disreputable lounge chair in which she spends most of her time watching one of the 128 channels she visits; likely, the shopping one. Nora will come in without knocking, the door, as usual, unlocked, the light dim, the scent of tobacco lingering in the air. And there will be Tillie, legs out on the extender, head back, mouth a bit ajar.

Nora will sit down on the beat-up couch, look at whatever magazines and catalogs Tillie has pilfered from the library, nibble a pretzel from the never-emptying basket, and then, through her trifocals, look at Tillie. She might tweak her toe.

And then Nora will see she’s a bit late for a visit. All unaware, she’s been left; her dear friend has been spirited off by the angels. Regardless of how many “pshaws” Tillie said when Nora lightly mentioned what awaited them all. Tillie was a very good person. She had a heart of gold. Hard on the outside but soft inside. Nora will miss her dreadfully.

The only thought that sustains her is that, so0ner rather than later, they’ll be together in a much happier place than the Zone. And Tillie’s door will still be unlocked. “Hey, lady,” she’ll say, “come in.”

And Tillie will get up and dance a jig. Her gimpy leg will be straight and strong, her teeth all back in her head, her dandelion-gone-to-seed hair a deep brown, wrinkles smoothed out, boobs high and firm, saggy belly tight as a drum. And she’ll will roll those agate eyes and lean over to tell Nora the very latest on their friend, Peggy.

Only, before the story is out, someone else comes in. A beautiful blonde bimbo. Hey, it’s Peg in her glorified body. And from the words that come from her mouth, one would think her thoughts have all been put in order:

“Oh, I can’t stay long because Manny is going to… You know he always does that for me.” And Tillie and Nora will look at one other.

P.S. Tillie’s x-rays came back okay.

Sara in hospital and other things

2008-03-19T08:02:00.000-07:00

Sara was in the hospital overnight for tests and they were worried although only two of them knew, Nora and Jolene, because Sara wanted it kept quiet, and they don’t blame her because in a place like this crepe would be hanging from her door in no time. It’s some kind of a stomach upset like a reflux problem. It was hoped Sara would come home soon.

Sara is home from the hospital and Nora and Jolene are rejoicing. She did not have any heart trouble as had been feared. It was her esophageal hernia acting up. Nora doesn’t know exactly what that is but supposes it is in the diaphragm and is affected by stomach acids and the like. Sara said the doctors told her to cut out caffeine and chocolate. Ouch and double ouch! The two things that sustain life as they know it.

Nora and Tillie went to the Store (thrift, that is) Tuesday, which is Senior day and everything is half price except pink and green tickets and Tillie bought curtains for her bedroom, pants, and a blouse, Nora, only a nice heavy baking pan that will be perfect for making two of her favorite desserts—pineapple upside down cake and tarte tatin.

She has to make a cake for the Big Birthday party Friday because she spoke when she should’ve just been listening at the resident forum. She raised her hand and asked Susan why don’t people volunteer to bring homemade cakes instead of having those yucky store-bought cakes that taste full of air and the icing like it’s mostly made of guar gum. She thought her idea would be seconded by others but it seems she is the only one wanting to cook. However, Frieda, a fairly new resident, said she’d bake a cake, too. And then Sara, in her usual way, pledged to make an angel food. So that should be enough, about forty servings because not all the people come out of their lairs. However, they might for the homemade goodies. Nora will probably make a chocolate sheet cake; Frieda, her applesauce cake. So it shall be seen: will the Zoners prefer homemade?

Nora is currently going through almost two years of slips from having used her check card and just throwing the receipts in a drawer. She’s doing this to make sure she entered them in her checkbook because she owes her bank a whopping $750 approx on her overdraft protection and wants to pay it off but feels the bank may have made a mistake. Her forget to enter her purchases? Not bloody likely!

This being Wednesday, Nora would be going to yoga but not any more because she’s stopped going. It was just kind of boring, all that meditation stuff. She gets more exercise and tranquility of spirit by frequent promenades through the Mart of the Wal and the Store.

She has been having some long thoughts about life and the hereafter which she knows awaits her and everyone in the Twilight Zone sooner rather than later. She doesn’t want to dwell on it excessively but it is fascinating to think about, really. To realize that people who have died can be very close to one in spirit on earth. Rather mind-blowing to think about; one can’t but briefly because it is too intense. But it doesn’t hurt to give it a quick glance now and then. And, of course, the entrée to this spirit world is prayer, heartfelt and simple. A few words or not even words sometimes but thoughts and not even thoughts sometimes but feelings and not even feelings sometimes as just awareness—keeping one’s eyes turned in the direction of the lovely face of God.

You are what you eat

2008-03-17T07:48:00.000-07:00

If this is true, then people in the Twilight Zone are mostly made of cake, cookies, Cool-Whip, popcorn, and punch. Maybe that’s why they’re so sweet and zesty. Except, of course, for a few, like Walt (beans and rice, mostly) and Tillie (M&Ms and Oreos). Sara and Nora and a few others eat fairly healthily. Shiko makes tempura vegetables and watery soup; Jolene is a meat-eater (keeps her fangs sharp), and somebody is cooking gosh-awful smelling stuff—maybe Ralph—because the smell lingers in the hallways. Entrails? Pig’s feet? Cirrhosis of the liver and onions? Lord only knows what it is. But then, people’s eating habits often seem strange to others. However, nothing quite takes the cake like what three veddy fashionable New York career women have revealed to be their “Daily Regimen.” (This is taken from an article that appeared in a fashion magazine a couple years back and just surfaced in Nora’s catch-all file. It is worth marveling at.)

“Nina,” a mid-40s lifestyle reporter:
9 am – 12-oz. diet Coke, a low-fat yogurt
11 am – 30-minute walk, 130 crunches
11:15 am – 22 oz. of water, five walnuts
4:30 pm – two cups of tea, one Milano cookie
5 pm – a boiled egg, five crackers, 12-oz. diet Coke
7:30 pm – one cracker with Brie, two glasses of white wine, bread with foie gras
11:30 pm – turkey burger, slice of cheese, potato chips, 12-oz. diet Coke
Total calaries consumed: approx. 1600

Jeanine, late 30s, creator of a cosmetic line:
8 am – coffee with milk and honey
9:15 am – blended drink made from the juices of one grapefruit and one lemon, one Tbs of oilive oil and ginger root
1 pm – two slices of tuna wasabi pizza, one bowl of creamy squash and mushroom soup, one beet, 8 oz. of water, one skim milk cappuccino with sugar
3 pm – 8 oz. of water
6:30 pm – 3-oz. breaded pork chop, a half-cup of brown rice, 8 oz. of water
8 pm – a half-cup of low-fat cheese puffs, one oatmeal wafer cookie
Total calories consumed: approx. 2080

Constanca, mid-20s, shoe designer:
9 am – 16 oz. of water
11 am – 8 oz. of water
3 pm – tuna salad on wheat bread, 8 oz. of iced tea with sugar
5 pm – 12-oz. diet Coke
8:30 pm – 1- whole-wheat crackers, 8 oz. of water
11 pm – 4-oz. piece of grilled chicken, one cup of white rice, two Tbs of black beans, two cups of grated carrots with one Tbs of olive oil
Total calories consumed: approx. 1240

Nora, early 80s, resident of the Twilight Zone:
5:45 am – two cups of strong black coffee
6:50 am – one-half of grapefruit with 1 Tbs sugar, one-half-cup of stewed steel-cut oatmeal with 1 Tbs brown sugar and 2 Tbs half-and half, 6 oz. of 2% milk, vitamin pills
10 am – two Trefoil Girl Scout cookies or one banana
10:15 – brisk walk down hall to ride elevator to first floor to mailboxes
12 noon – sandwich made with two slices Country White bread, mayo, hot mustard, bunch of thin-cut deli ham, slice of sharp cheddar, lettuce leaf; 20 Parmesan and Garlic Boulder chips, 1 wedge of left-over lemon meringue pie (made for Tillie’s birthday)
2 pm – 30 or 40-minute nap
3:30 pm – hot tea
4 pm – 10 or 15 minutes on the treadmill, 10 revolutions of the stationary bike
7 pm – pasta carbonara, made with 4 oz. fettuccine, 2 slices thick-cut bacon, several sliced mushrooms browned in olive oil with chopped onion, fresh parsley, raw egg (mostly cooked by heat of fettuccine), 2 oz. shredded Asiago cheese. Green salad with vinaigrette dressing. One large slice buttered French bread with garlic salt. Two homemade iced pecan cookies. Decaf.
10 pm – tangerine
10:45 pm - ZZZZzzzzz

Total calories consumed: None of your beeswax.

Sharing a cigarette with Bette Davis

2008-03-14T07:50:00.000-07:00

A post several weeks ago by Judith Shapiro on her blog, Remembering Matters, about the culture and mystique of cigarette smoking, has caused Nora to recall a highpoint of her young life: when she and Bette Davis shared a cigarette.

It came about like this.

The year—1943, the middle of the war years; the place, Tulsa, Oklahoma; the occasion, a war bond rally in the Coliseum. The guest speaker: the glamorous movie star, Bette Davis, who had just finished making “Now Voyager.”

Nora was a senior in a Tulsa high school. Two girls were chosen from each school to serve as Bette’s “Honor Escort” and sit on the stage with her, and she was one of them. Bette was going around the country promoting the sale of War Bonds. She was in her mid-thirties then, in the prime of her power and beauty. She wore a long, black, V-neck dress and an orchid corsage. Her hair was golden-blonde, her skin flawless, her flashing blue eyes large and lustrous, and her expressive mouth at its most scornful, gracious, amused, mocking, all in turn. She was also smoking.

Bette met privately with the eighteen or so girls of the Honor Escort in a small room before the rally began. They had assembled early in a state of high excitement to await her entry. And they were not disappointed.

Bette swept into the room and gave them that wide, enigmatic smile. Then she sat down at a small table to talk to the teenagers, and they could ask her questions. On the table was an ashtray, and in Bette’s lap was a silver lame evening bag, and in the bag were her cigs and lighter.

She stayed the length of one cigarette. Then she stabbed it into the ashtray, stood up and posed for pictures with some of the girls. They were, of course, overwhelmed by the charisma of her presence. Then she swept out to go and make her speech. The girls followed to sit with her.

But Nora was not so overcome that she didn’t make it first to the table and the ashtray. She grabbed the still-warm cigarette butt, fuchsia-edged, much to the envy of her fellow escorts. She may have hidden it in the lace of her mother’s awful dress she’d had to wear or maybe palmed it throughout the program.

Anyway, it ended up in Nora’s jewel box, carefully wrapped in tissue. Nora would take it out now and then and show it off, reverentially. Eventually, the butt crumbled so badly than when she wasn’t there her stepmother threw it out.

Nora should’ve had that cigarette butt bronzed.

How good is good?

2008-03-12T09:24:00.000-07:00

Nora and her friends in the Twilight Zone are practically at the nadir of their lives, at which point it is only natural to wonder what is going to happen next and when. And how much does how they feel determine it. And how good is good.

To elucidate some of these vague things:

Each day people ask of others “How are you?”

But in the world outside the Twilight Zone, people ask it too. People who are dark-haired, dewy-eyed, and stand up straight. The question means something entirely different in the larger world. Like, “Did you have a nice weekend, have a hot date, eat something good, finish your homework, get away from your parents, etc.”

But in the Twilight Zone “How are you?” has different connotations. It could be: “Are you in pain, did you sleep more than a few hours, did you eat your prunes and oatmeal, did you have a good constitutional, do you remember what you did yesterday, will you have enough money to finish the month…?”

And yet, the answers given in the Zone are just about the same as they are everywhere else, even though they are somewhat wistful thinking and a touch of bravado.

“I’m fine. Okay. Good. Better.”

Yet only a few Zoners walk with a spring in their step. And this could be because their walker hit a bump. Only a handful go into the exercise room to use the treadmill, stationary bike, lift weights, etc. (Except for Type A Walt who runs up and down the stairs, first floor to the third, 24 times a day. But he is a maniac.) Those who use the exercise room report it makes them feel good.

But how good is good? What are the criteria for feeling good? Is one person’s “good” another’s “mediocre” and still another’s “barely hanging on?” Are people kidding themselves when they think they feel good when it’s just because they’re so used to the way they feel that it’s like “I’ve been down so long it feels like up.”

Take Tillie, for example. Tillie’s face reveals the struggle when she moves. Peggy’s face reveals the same thing, only it’s her brain cells trying to spark. Sara doesn’t complain but she has her little dings, such as a screw in an ankle that had been broken that presses against the skin and should probably be removed. She is supposed to avoid caffeine and chocolate, two of her favorite things, because of acid reflux. And Small Betty bears daily witness to the break-down of the human body.

And so the cavalcade goes—Ralph with his wonderfully developed upper body but the absence of one lower extremity. Fee-Fee, who’s now on a dialysis program three times a week, four hours a time. Shiko, in whose wizened face the lines have grown deeper but who will never, ever, tell you how she feels.

Curious Nora wants to know. But the inscrutable one darts away. Well, she can still run pretty good.

Walking straight to school

2008-03-10T08:16:00.000-07:00

At game night last week, Nora drew a card that instructed her to tell a “life story” about something she and a brother or sister did together as children. This is what she told:

The most important order we were given each morning was to "walk straight to school."

My brother Joey, eighteen months older than I, was ingenuous. My skill was in shadowing him.

He left the house and went directly across the street into a neighbor’s yard. Without deviating from his path, he went into the back yard through a gate and climbed over the back fence. I was right behind him. But as I started over the fence, a chow dog came from behind some bushes. It had a lolling purple tongue. Fear lent me wings and I flew over the fence.

We crossed an alley and arrived at the back of an apartment house. As the need for security was unheard of in those days, the door was unlocked. Joey opened it and went inside, me slinking along but of course he knowing I was there. The hallway smelled like old tomato soup cans or maybe chicken noodle. We went out the front door onto Peoria Street.

Our straight path to school led into an alley beside the Plaza, the neighborhood movie theater. We went down this alley and behind the theater where we found a mound of chopped-up movie tickets and put some into our pockets.

Now, a brick building blocked our way. It was three or four stories high and was so close to a similar building that there was only about a foot of space between them. My skinny brother disappeared into that narrow opening. I followed him. I was pudgier.

Joey got out and disappeared. I suddenly felt claustrophobic. I could hear the buttons on my coat getting scratched. The sky was high above. Sweat broke out on my forehead. I made it through just in time to see Joey disappear into the alley entrance of the A&P grocery.

Men were unloading crates of produce from trucks. I sauntered past them into a room full of boxes; on one side through a window I could see carcasses of skinned animals hung up. I pushed through a swinging door into the center aisle of the store.

Joey, surprisingly, was outside the store waiting for me.

“Here’s the toughest part,” he said. “Are you game?”

Of course I was. I would’ve followed him on a straight path to Hell. Even across the street and onto the school grounds of Lincoln public grade school.

We went through an opening in the iron fence. Kids were running around chasing each other and playing mumblety-peg and marbles in rings drawn in the red Oklahoma clay.

Joey walked across a marble ring with about a half-dozen boys kneeling around it, thumbing their aggies.

“Hey! Watch where you’re going.”

“They’re parokes!”

I ran across the marble ring, too. The publicks were too astonished to do more than shout at us. They knew who we were, just as we would’ve known who they were, if any of them had wandered onto our play yard.

We made it out, and now our own school was in sight, across the apron of a service station.

Joey looked back at me, scowling or maybe winking. We had just about walked straight to school, just like we’d been told to do.

We went through the gas pumps and in a few moments arrived before the big double doors of Christ the King church. In front of us was our last obstacle. This we could not go through: Monsignor Severn, his arms folded over his purple sash on his ample stomach in his black chasuble.

“Good morning, Monsignor,” we said, stepping respectfully around him.

“You are late, children, go directly in to your places.”

“Yes, Monsignor.”

We did not have to be told twice. We made our way in, flushed and sweaty, but triumphant. Such obedient children we were.

Life Stories

2008-03-07T10:25:00.000-08:00

Thursday, the game people played a new one brought by Small Bette called Life Stories, “the game of telling tales and sharing smiles.” Upon seeing it and understanding what it entailed, Nora grimaced because some of the people at the table, notably the newish woman, Donna, suffered from end-stage talkitis. Maybe if they used an hourglass…

There were the usual dice to roll, markers to move into squares, and cards to be drawn that specified the type of “life story” the player should tell. For example: a favorite party attended, a remembered meal of childhood, a club belonged to, a time when one got into trouble, etc. The game continued until everyone went around the board to something called the “Grand Celebration” (or people’s heads fell onto the table.) Whichever came first.

Sara led off and told about “a narrow escape in childhood.”

“When I was about two I swallowed an open safety pin.”

Oooo! In those days did they have laparoscopes?

“Well, they had something,” she said. “It had to be brought from another city. And I guess I was put under and the pin was removed.”

Tillie was next. Her assignment was to tell a about a parking ticket or other traffic violation. She thought a moment and then told about driving up the wrong ramp into a bank’s parking garage that led to where the bank’s officers parked. She took the president’s spot. And a policeman working off-duty gave her a ticket.

Tillie appeared to visibly grow hot as she told about it. “I had just gotten dumped by my third husband and it looked like I was going to lose our house and a whole lot of crap like that so I was in no mood to be hassled by some young punk cop. I said there was no sign down below or directions and I’d go and find the bank president if I had to and tell him to stick it…”

Nora held up the lid of the box: “Tales…to share smiles.”

But Tillie was too exercised. “He tried to argue with me and I called him a pr…k.”

“Wow! You didn’t!”

“I did. And then I went into the bank and asked for the president and someone pointed him out to me because he was just walking by.”

Tillie paused as she sometimes does in telling something.

“And? And?“

“Oh,” Tillie said, “he went into the garage with me, we walked up the ramp together and he told the policeman to tear up the ticket.”

“If you’d been a man you’d’ve been put in the slammer,” Nora said.

It was her turn next. She drew: “Describe something you and a brother or sister did together.”

It was right in her mind. “Walking straight to school,” she said.

How boring does that sound?

Read Monday’s blog to see what straight means to children with an active, somewhat weird imagination.

A story about nothing

2008-03-05T08:26:00.000-08:00

At Tuesday coffee, Tillie was sitting with Small Betty, Nora, and Peggy. Four to a card table. When up comes Shelta, all bustly, who asks “Is there room for me?” Well, it’s been known that people squeeze in on the corners. But Tillie right away piped up, “No, there isn’t.”

“Oh, c’mon,” Nora said, scooting her chair over a little, not that she’s so noble but it was a little raw what Tillie said. Shelta kind of bumped people so Peggy spilt her coffee, and then Shelta sailed off, to find a place at another table. It seemed like a small blip on the radar of the Twilight Zone.

Next incident: Peggy had loaned her sewing machine to Crabby Molly months ago because Peggy doesn’t sew much anymore. But she calls Molly and asks for it back (apparently remember where it is), saying she’s going to “mend something.” This is what Molly reports to people. And that Peggy then says, “I’ll be home all day.”

Now the average person in the Twilight Zone would say, if they want their belonging back, “Could I come and get it now?” But, according to the irascible one, the implication in what Peggy said was…”Bring it me.” And people don’t treat the Mol like that.

Next day, Nora is in Tillie’s apartment, and Tillie says, “Someone here is really mad at me.” Nora asks who and Tillie tells her to guess. Well, any number of people could be mad at Tillie at any given moment and Nora proceeds to count them off on her fingers: Jolene, who thinks Tillie is trailer trash, Polly, who was always irked by the late little dog of Tillie’s, Zora, whose son sells tamales, and so on. But Tillie shook her head to all these.

Light broke upon Nora. “Shelta.”

Tillie nodded. Then she recounted the Tuesday morning scene at the table. “Remember, how upset she was and bumped you so you spilled your coffee?”

“That was Peggy’s coffee.”

“Whatever. What did I say exactly?”

“You told her there wasn’t room for her.”

“Well, why should that make her mad?”

Nora made a “Well, duh,” face. “How do you know she’s mad?”

“Because when we had computer class she gave me the cold shoulder.”

“Hmm. What will you do about it?”

‘I suppose I’ll have to apologize. But she should have known I was kidding.”

Nora had no further comment. Feelings here were quick to get prickly. Tillie then told her about the Molly, Peggy, and sewing machine stand-off.

“Did Molly then return the machine?”

“How was she going to do it, put it on her walker?”

“Well, how did she get it to her place in the first place?”

“I don’t know,’ Tillie wailed. “This place is driving me crazy.”

There was a small basket of pretzels, some yogurt-covered, on Tillie’s coffee table. They’d been there for months unless Tillie ate them at night and replenished them in the morning. Nora took one up. “These pretzels are making me thirsty,’ she said.

Tillie thought a moment and then laughed. Her memory for trivia is wonderful.

Nora brainstorms

2008-03-03T09:02:00.000-08:00

Nora is toying with the idea of not deleting the things she writes that she later considers too personal because this morning she got a great idea, if it works: copy them and go to the ‘Net, to one of those free translation sites, and paste in the passage and then click on one of the languages to change it into. Then export it back to her saved document in Word. That ought to fool people nosing about her computer after she suddenly expires.

They’d come to this bit in Spanish, Italian, German, or maybe Chinese, and not know what Nora had written. Of course, for her own purposes, she’d end up with something slightly scrambled. Because she tried it and here’s what she got:

English: “Nora is growing fond of Cass.”

Portuguese: “Nora esta tornado-se carinhoso de Cass”

Translation back: “Nora is when was made affectionate of Cass.”

It needs some fine-tuning.

Nora told Sara about another idea she has for a novel. She called it “Pass a Cup of Sugar Day,” and Sara really liked it and promptly began referring to it as “Sugar Day,” which is a better title. And now, almost every morning, she asks Nora if she’s written on it. Nora has not because…well, Sara cannot appreciate the difficulties of writing a full-length novel. It’s easy to get an idea, the world is full of good ideas, but developing one on paper every morning (speaking loosely of the machine) for about six or eight months, is quite another thing. But Nora appreciates Sara’s interest and encouragement. It’s what every creative person needs. Oh, the idea of “Sugar Day?”

“Sugar Day” begins in an inauspicious way. A woman living in a mid-sized middle-American town writes a letter to the editor of her newspaper suggesting a remedy for the alienation of their times: declare a city-wide “Borrow a Cup of Sugar Day.” On this day, people would stay home from work, children home from school, so everyone could participate (some other arrangement is made for those in essential jobs like hospital workers and firemen, etc.). People would knock on neighbor’s doors with empty cups for sugar so they could get to know them. The mayor, an amiable sort (modeled on Mayor Hickenlooper of Denver, don’t you love the name and just know you would always trust someone with it?) loves the idea and so declares a day which everyone calls “Sugar Day.”

And from that humble beginning, a movement begins, not only in the first town, but across the country and the oceans, to become global. Different days when everyone does the same thing. Mass consciousness. Or, rather, collective consciousness. It becomes a terrific force in the world. And good things happen, like, “Love your neighbor day.” In order to introduce conflict, however, there has to be an opposing force which Nora calls “The Dark Side.” More later about all this, maybe. Now, Nora needs to take an aspirin.

Figuring out the DVD

2008-02-29T09:39:00.000-08:00

Last night they ordered in pizza (not very good) and watched a movie Tillie had, “Narnia.” She, Nora, Peggy, Cass, Li-Li for awhile and a couple of onlookers, Fred and Martha, who didn’t participate. The only problem was none of them could switch the TV onto the DVD player. Each tried without success. There were three remotes but since only one said “Sony” that must be the right one. But nothing seemed to work. They wondered who in the building could do it, and Nora went to the vestibule and rang on the call box their younger, smart lady, Jolene. She said get some “guy” but she came down anyway but couldn’t figure it out.

So then Nora rang the newlyweds, Detroit Dick and Fee-Fee, and for the first few minutes of their conversation they thought Nora wanted them to let her back in so they kept clicking the door.

“No,” Nora said, “I live here. We want Dick to come down and work this blankety-blank thing for us.”

Finally, Fee-Fee said he’d be down as soon as he put his shoes on.

It seemed to take him forever, prompting Cass to say, “He had more to put on than his shoes,” at which some of them snickered.

Cass was in his usual spot, right in front of the screen, with Peggy by his side, Tillie on a side couch and Nora on the other with Li-Li. Cass, a little surprisingly, kept making little aside funnies to Nora, at which she managed to dredge up a few chuckles. Lying on the couch that way showed off her fat tummy which she managed to work into the conversation as, “Oh, I have my stomach.”

“No,” Cass said, “you look good.”

She took that to be a compliment, ho-ho.

After much fiddling around, Dick finally got the DVD on. They said he was their “hero” and he left. They settled back to watch Narnia. There was a scene of some cliffs. It kept showing cliffs for a while, and Nora realized something more was required of them; they had to push some other button to get it to play the movie. So she experimented with the remote and the movie began.

By and by, with repeated jackings-up of the volume, they all realized that with the Brit accents and their poor hearing, none of them were getting it, so Nora showed off again. She pushed “sub titles” and the words popped on. They resettled, only to realize that she’d also stopped the action. She pushed a backward arrow and it went back to the beginning of the movie, some ten or fifteen minutes ago. Finally, pushing other buttons put them back somewhere and they didn’t mind that they missed a segment.

By and by, however, Cass faded away. And the rest of them—Tillie’s eyes were closed—decided they’d watch the rest of it some other time. They all agreed that if they’d had a ten-year-old child there, he or she could’ve figured it all out for them.

A Sara fix

2008-02-27T07:41:00.000-08:00

Everyone in the Zone—well, not everyone exactly, but a lot of people—want a “Sara Fix.” The other day, Nora went to see her in her apartment because she, herself, felt in the need of one. And she said this to Sara when she opened her door. And Sara laughed and obliged with a quick little hug. Nora could not say why she needed one but she did. She could not put into words something she just knew. Both sat down, Sara on the white couch and Nora on the olive green velvet chair, and Nora began to babble on; well, not exactly babble but explore what she had in her mind. And Sara began to listen.

But only about four minutes went by before there came a knock on the door. “Fooey,” Nora felt like saying as Sara got up to see who it was. It was another person needing the same thing that Nora had needed; the lady in the wheelchair with only one leg, Patty. Nora was wishing she couldn’t quite wheel through the door but of course she could, and Sara escorted her in where she parked by N’s elbow who looked at her obliquely. Sara resumed her place on the couch, first offering tea which Patty shook her head to.

And the talk began which Nora didn’t attend too well but something about how Patty felt and the rest of her family, etc., etc. Sara gave strokes. In a little bit, Nora, studying her watch, said “I’m going to go,” in a nice way, implying she had an important engagement elsewhere.

Sara said, ‘No, you’re not.’ And she stood up. Well, to get to the point here, Patty did leave, and Nora said she was going to the exercise room and walk a mile or so on the treadmill. By this time it was past four o’clock. Sara said she would accompany her. So they rode the elevator down, meeting several people in the hallways who tried to detain them; not Nora so much, but Sara, for the light of her smile.

And downstairs, of course, it was not much better. It was the time of day when people flake in to see if by some miracle, the mailman has come, or at the near end of the day, feel the need for human companionship. There was Donna of the jutting jaw, Peggy, Cass, Detroit Dick, Fee-Fee, a new woman, Joanne, and Susan, the manager. They all didn’t exactly come into the exercise room with Sara and Nora but seemed to yearn wistfully after Lady Bountiful as Nora now called her evanescent friend.

Nora got on the ‘mill and set it for a fast pace, up to 20 kilometers or whatever the gauge means, and began to walk off her slight pique that she could never, it seemed, get Sara alone to listen to just her. She was reaffirmed in her judgment that “charming people were nigh impossible to be with.” She understood full-well why the Duke in Browning’s poem, “My Last Dutchess” finally had to send his cute little wife away. She was casting her smiles everywhere, on stable boys and milkmaids, the capricious wench!

Sara was sitting on the stationary bike attempting a revolution or two; but a couple of needy folks were engaging her. Nora pushed up her speed to 24…25…28…her feet in their athletic shoes flew, her creaky hips swiveled, she held onto the black rubber bars tightly, as she felt an imaginary breeze in her hair. Sara looked at her, that delightful look of arch surprise. Nora raised a hand to wave goodbye. But then she remembered an incident involving Trixie, the aged lady with the fluid-swollen legs (not 13 gallons, tho, as Tillie had said) losing her grip on the treadmill and going flying (not too seriously, although at 89, one should not do that), and Nora slowed to a walk. Oh well and ah woe, she’d corner Sara another time. Poor lady! N was rather glad she was not so charming herself.

Oh, dear

2008-02-25T07:28:00.000-08:00

The tenuousness of life in the Twilight Zone is not limited to its human occupants. Tillie called Nora early this morning to tell her that Taco Belle died during the night. “Oh, no!” Nora cried. “Oh, I am so sorry. I thought the vet said she was fine.”

“He was wrong,” Tillie said, her voice quavering. She and her son Matt had taken the little Chihuahua for a check-up just a week ago because Tillie sensed something was going on with her. As she told Nora, she “hasn’t pooped for four or five days and she’s not eating.” But the vet had said Taco Belle was “healthy as a horse.”

Nora felt an immediate sense of loss and sorrow. She’d been in Tillie’s apartment petting Taco Belle just yesterday afternoon, running her finger down the slope of her brow onto her small nose as the little thing lay in an indentation made atop one of the couch’s velour cushions. She’d seemed okay; quiet, cozy, as a little old lady would be. Tillie thought she was about thirteen years old but the vet said more likely fifteen. So that is very old for a dog.

“What can I do?” Nora asked. “Do you want me to come down?” She was still in her nitie and had only drunk one cup of her strong morning coffee.

“No, that’s okay,” Tillie said. “Matt came last night and took her away. He’s going to bury her in his back yard.” Ohh, Tillie’s voice sounded old and sad, with none of her usual spark. “Matt just broke up and was crying like anything.”

“Umm,” Nora breathed in consolation. She felt almost the same way. In the months she’d lived in the Twilight Zone, Taco Belle had beguiled her way into her affections powerfully. It would not be the same to go into Tillie’s dark, cave-like apartment without the familiar “yap, yap” and the shimmying of the small, warm body to greet her. And the petting and playing on the couch before Nora and Tillie could even think to begin their conversation.

“I’ll come later, then, dear,” Nora said, “and if there’s anything…”

“There isn’t,” Tillie cut her off peremptorily. “I’m just going to cocoon.”

After Nora dressed she went down into the lobby. Cass was there and she told him. He said Peggy had told him. They sat a few minutes making talk. Shiko came around the corner. Because she was smiling Nora guessed she had not heard the news. Shiko, who, with her husband, the Great Gildersleeve, lived next door to Tillie, was especially fond of Taco Belle. And when Shiko was fond of someone or something she went all the way.

Nora told her. Her wizened face was blank for a moment and then it began to crumple. “No, no, no,” she made a soft, crooning sound. Nora patted her shoulder. She could look down upon her head, like a raven’s wing. But as she does, Shiko soon separated from her. She was too stoical to take comfort.

It was a tiny blow among life’s four-hundred but still it hurt dreadfully.

The meaninglessness of?

2008-02-22T07:49:00.000-08:00

The New Yorker had a story in an issue some time ago that was strange. It was about a mother and her six-year old daughter on a play date with another mother and her six-year-old girl. They were classmates at a very modern school in NYC. While the little girls played in one room, the mothers visited, exchanged slight bits of information about themselves—one was divorced, moved back from California, had only the one child, had had a break-in that scared her, and was a native New Yorker. She was an editor for a law firm. The other had twin boys left with a sitter, her husband was away on a trip, and she was a potter working at home. They drank two bottles of wine and got pretty tipsy. The whole point of the story was the seeming meaninglessness of their lives, even the lives of their little girls. The two men in their lives were absent. The story was written in such a style that it made almost everything the characters did seem ridiculous, empty, nihilistic, soulless.

A story could be written like this about any period of time, say in the 1940s or 50s, and describe in detail what the day is like—or, even here, in the Twilight Zone, and make it sound the same. The clothes, the food, the furniture, the conversation, some of the thoughts described in a toneless manner. For example:

Nora awoke early as usual. Her room was cool because she’d pushed up the aluminum storm window the night before. The purple/white sheets, only 50% cotton, from Tarshay as they called it, felt wrinkly against her skin which she’d neglected to lotionize after swimming the day before at the superdome. She’d only showered briefly and did not borrow Sara’s body wash as Sara offered. She stretched and yawned and thought of what she might do this day. What else does a human being do besides breathe, take up space, and lose imperceptible skin cells that somehow gather on the hard plastic sides of the soles of her clogs as she walks about her beige-carpeted 700 sq.ft. apartment…

Each day in every way she is disappearing into the cosmos.

On the agenda today: morning coffee at ten with the other denizens of the Twilight Zone when they meet in the activity room, sit at card tables covered with colored plastic clothes whose denier is a scant millimeter, drink Folgers or MJB, and eat frosted donuts with sprinkles on them, fruit in season—some of them wonder if the management washes the fruit first…

The heck with that nonsense. Nora got up, turned on her ‘puter, went to the john, put on her bathrobe and slippers and began her day.

Miscellany, daughter Anne's birthday

2008-02-21T08:20:00.000-08:00

Nora made a pizza with dough from Whole Foods and put on it Asiago cheese, artichoke hearts, a tiny bit of proscuitto ($22 a lb.), and Greek olives. After all that, it didn’t taste so great to her but perhaps will today when the flavors have had a chance to meld and the cook’s palate is not so jaded.

Type A Walt keeps working around the place. The other day Nora could hardly get out the East door because it was blocked by a large bucket of soapy water. She persisted, and there was Walt in the tunnel-like area sweeping and scrubbing. He said, “Someone (unnamed persons) spilled something here and did not clean it up.” H e sounded very annoyed as if it had been done to him personally, so Nora had the good sense not to comment.

The week before she’d seen him in the library sorting all the periodicals that people dump in there. He had a large trash bag. This makes Tillie mad because she likes to read the back issues, especially women’s clothing catalogs. She also says he “rats on people, like if they stay in the lobby too long with their dogs on the way out.” Then they get a warning from the management. Like Tillie got; only hers was an eviction notice which she has, by the way, talked to Susan about. So it’s okay.

On the docket today:

Big birthday party at 2:30 and this evening, play Canasta. Swimming again on Friday. Nora wonders if exercises done in the water are as beneficial as those done on land. She certainly could not do the can-can on land the way she does it in the water nor jump rope or ski moguls.

Saturday, Nora had dinner to celebrate her daughter Anne’s birthday at her daughter Greta’s house whose husband Cary fixed everything even to setting the table. Greta sat in the living room knitting while visiting with her guests. Nora asked “Shouldn’t we help him?”

Greta said that Cary was too spastic and hyper to have anyone in the kitchen with him. Anne and Nora wondered if they could clone him.

People kept trooping in: the two children each had three friends over, Anne had come in with three friends, granddaughter Solitaire brought her two little girls, and Nora had brought granddaughter Emma, and then grandson Caleb came, so altogether about 18 people sat around the table. But it was like the loaves and fishes, they never ran out of food in small platters that miraculously kept replenishing. Cary fixed hot wings (and they were spicy enough to burn your lips but the kids loved them), fried butterflied shrimp from Costco, a big box full), a rice casserole, salad, broccoli, and ice cream and cake. The cake was white frosting, thick and gooey, strawberry layers and chocolate filling.

Nora gave Anne a card with a $25 check in it, and when Anne opened the card she laughed and exclaimed “This is the very same card you gave me last year!” It had a picture of a stern-faced nun saying “It is a sin for you to look so good.” Nora did not remember she had given it the year before but the cruel young people swore she had.

Jolene, again

2008-02-20T07:35:00.000-08:00

The charmer lady, Jolene, called Nora again to ask her to care for her cat while she was off on another trip. So Nora goes to her apartment to get the key, and Jolene being the talker she is, stays a bit, mostly listening and thinking there was no end to the drama here. Jolene recounted in detail with gestures the fracas the other day between Shiko and Crabby Molly over which new cross-word puzzle to work. A 750-piece one or a 1000-piece one, adding why didn’t Susan, the manager, intervene?

Then she said, suddenly tearing up, that she had had her own confrontation with the management. It was a roundabout story involving the funny little woman, Inez. Seems Inez was in the lobby wearing her bathrobe over her clothes. Jolene “nicely” told Inez that wearing the bathrobe in the lobby was not appropriate and gave the place the appearance of a nursing home, and wouldn’t Inez like to go back now to her apartment and finish dressing.

Inez left and a bit later Susan steps from her office and summons Jolene with a crook of her finger, a gesture most people past the third grade do not like. When Jolene enters her office, the manager closes the door, not a good sign either, and says, “We have a problem.” She proceeded to say that Inez was in tears over Jolene’s remarks. So the story went on and on and in the relating of it, Jolene’s eyes flashed and she grew increasingly expostulatory.

It went through Nora’s mind that here was a clear case of….megalomania…making a mountain out of a molehill. She finally was able to disengage and go back to her own place. Where she pondered. There were really very few completely normal people living under this roof. Which shouldn’t be surprising because, as her old theme went, it’s a wonder anyone survives life at all, it being the bitch it is. Of course, she didn’t really believe that. Except sometimes.

Well, it does look a little funny to see Inez sitting in the lobby without saying much. She doesn’t have her bathrobe on now over her clothes but is wearing a scarf tied over her golf cap.

Tillie gets eviction notice

2008-02-19T08:08:00.000-08:00

Nora went downstairs yesterday to see Tillie and there was a notice taped to her door. Nora read it and took it in to Tillie who hadn’t seen it yet. “This is serious shit!”

It was from the management of the Twilight Zone and was headed “Compliance or Eviction.” It was a legal form, like a summons or a serving of notice that stated Tillie had three days to correct things or she’d be evicted from the Twilight Zone. The reasons: misbehavior with her little dog, Taco Belle. The infractions were listed: off the leash at times in the lobby, poop not always cleaned up outdoors, etc., etc. Tillie read it and turned pale.

“Damn, someone’s out to get me. It’s that bitch Polly! She’s told on me to Susan.”

“It doesn’t matter now,” Nora said. “You have to comply or they’ll have your belongings out on the curb. You need to have your son take Taco Belle. Do you think he would?” Tillie stared at Nora, perhaps unable to comprehend the seriousness of the situation and the need for immediate action.

“She’s my little friend.”

“I know,” Nora consoled, “but, believe me, if you set foot outside your apartment with her for even a moment without her leashed, they’ll boot you right out. And think how much we’d miss you.”

Whose doings? Were there Quislings here? Nora petted the little Chihuahua nuzzling her shoulder. She would miss her, too. How could anyone be so mean? If she were evicted, where would Tillie go? As imperfect as the Twilight Zone was, it had been her home for almost two years and at her age it would be hard to be uprooted. Nora patted Tillie’s knee (in between pats to Taco Belle). “Call Matt and see if he can come over.”

Tillie did, he didn’t answer, and she left a message.

“And she’s on her last legs, too,” Tillie bemoaned.

“What? I thought you took her to the vet and he said she was healthy as a horse.”

“An old horse. He thought she was even more than thirteen years old.”

“That sounds old for a Chihuahua.”

Tillie said nothing but looked mournful.

There is a handwritten sign in the lobby illustrated with a pair of wild eyes. It says:

“You are being watched. Do not remove or mess up this puzzle.”

Nora read it and looked furtively around. She was the one who’d removed the jigsaw puzzle a few days ago that was now back on the table, about two-thirds completed. She’d taken it, in a very incipient stage, because she’d thought it too detailed, a scene of an old-time general store that had lots of things on its shelves. She’d replaced it with a puzzle showing a winter scene of a cottage in the snow at night with moonlight on it. But it had had too much grey in it. So she was sorry she had. Shiko had probably written this note because she was the main puzzle worker. Nora did not want to bring the tiny one’s wrath down upon her head. So she merely looked at the puzzle, tempted to try to fit a piece in, but thought better of it.

Shelta

2008-02-18T09:04:00.000-08:00

She is amazingly, cheerfully, resolutely, confidently, steadfast in her limited world view. She is a certain Irish type, a banty rooster, which she even looks like, with her pinky-blonde cockscomb of hair, her curved plump little breast, her shapely thin legs, and something about how she carries her head, on the cruise for currents to engage.

This was Nora’s opinion after spending some time with a woman who’s been mentioned before, Shelta.

Shelta spoke to, greeted, smiled at, Nora long before Nora began to return the favors, learning her name and absorbing and reflecting back some of her warmth. But upon venturing further into her orbit—or being drawn into in, “kicking and screaming—” Nora formed the opinion first stated: the woman did not have the slightest idea about what she talked with such panache. In other words, she was a blow-hard, a term usually reserved for men. Irish, Nora thought again, although she herself owed most of her heritage to the Celts. But a certain type, as stated, the kind whose ignorance does not prevent them from expressing it. There are other Irish, like Joyce and McCourt, the great Irish poets and balladeers, whose sensitivity makes one’s heart ache. Of whose company, Shelta is not one.

But, Nora thought, she had come so far along that she felt only kindliness toward the woman, no distain, and actually, though it does not sound like it, no condescension. If that itself were not a condescending thought. And how did she judge the paucity of Shelta’s inward scape?

A simple conversation in a Starbucks, one of the millions that take place daily all over the known world. How did it begin? Oh, yes, Nora employed her usual gambits of conversation by asking Shelta a few things, like, “How long have you lived in the Twilight Zone?” It was the doorbell that opened up the chambers.

“Five years…husband had just died…tried to sell house…took eleven months …terrible real estate woman agent…now, why would a woman treat another woman like that?...no, the housing market was good, it wasn’t that…now, why would a woman treat another…

Nora interrupted mentally by inserting “How come you didn’t fire her?” and then verbally by mentioning something about her own house she’d sold in a month or two to which Shelta paid the most momentary obeisance.

“Oh, that was good. Now, why would a real estate agent treat another woman like that?... And a few minutes later… “Now why…” Oh….well…

And now they’ve resurrected Canasta as their Thursday night game and Shelta is one of the players. Aieeee!

Call it sleep

2008-02-15T09:06:00.000-08:00

As has been mentioned before, everyone has different sleeping habits. Tillie falls asleep in her recliner about seven and sleeps until maybe midnight, when she rouses and goes into her bed until around two a.m. Then she gets up and makes a pot of coffee which keeps her going until mid-afternoon, when she falls asleep again in her recliner only this time about 2:30 or three.

Invariably, Peggy comes in and wakes her then. They visit a few minutes and Peggy says she has to go because she’s sleepy and has to take her nap.

(Nora has made a “Nap Time” sign for Tillie to put on her door but Tillie isn’t using it. Nora uses hers and it works for everyone except Tillie who will ring her doorbell anyway.)

Sara stays up late to watch Charlie Rose or Stephen Colbert, goes to bed but often is still awake at 3:30. She reads or writes notes to people. The other morning she came down to the lobby to meet Nora to go swimming and stretched out on the couch in a humorous way to show she was eggzausted…

Nora falls asleep on the couch during the ten o’clock news during which the commercials irritate some deep inward part of her brain and she wakes up muttering angrily, lurches around putting her coffee on for morning, brushing her teeth, getting into her nitie, turning off the phone so no one will disturb her (remembering younger days when her kids gave her fits; hopefully, if there’s any problem in the building there’ll be a central alarm because she can’t be reached by telephone). She says the short version of her prayers, plumps up her pillow, and gets on her stomach for that is the position that tells her body and brain it’s time to sleep.

And she does fall into a deep sleep almost immediately. She sleeps like a drunken sailor until about the hour Sara is still awake to, 3:30 or 4. Nora awakens with a raspy throat which tells her she’s been snoring like the sailor who must’ve sent everyone else to the f’o’c’s’le or wherever they can find to escape the din.

She’s long since abandoned the flat of her front (it’s not really, ha, ha) for the flat of her back which position allows her mouth to fall open to snore. She would like very much to be able to go on trips and share rooms with people (ladies like herself of course) but would not want to inflict her snoring on anyone…

Anyway, at 3:30 or so she gets up to go to the john, then back to bed hopefully to fall asleep again until at least six or thereafter. But now her somnolent mind has become active and she may not be able to recapture sleep. And so it goes in the Twilight ZZZZzzzzzone.

Starch in spine (part 2)

2008-02-14T10:02:00.000-08:00

Nora and her daughter Anne are about to visit an old friend of the family who lives in a fancy retirement home. Nora hasn’t seen Kay for about five years. The last time she visited, Kay wasn’t at all happy to see her because of an old estrangement between them. But now Nora has yielded to her daughter’s plea to see Kay because Anne has such good memories of Kay and her family when she was growing up.

They’ve entered the dining room where they were told Kay is. It is large and sunny, filled with round tables like a field of mushrooms. “There she is,” the woman from the front desk points out and she leaves them.

Anne suddenly has an attack of shyness. “You first, Mom.”

Nora goes toward the table.

Kay looks very different than she’d looked five years ago but still Nora recognizes her. Her hair is lighter, almost reddish where it had been dark, and it is shorter, puffier, but sparser. Nora walks around the table to face her. She is about to speak when Anne says, “Hello, Mrs. McClain, I’m Anne Christie. And this is my Mom, Nora Christie. Do you remember us?”

Kay’s face is open, guileless, the expression on it almost childlike. But she has the same curves to her cheeks, the same gleam in her eyes, although they’ve changed color, from dark brown to a kind of caramel.

“Yes,” Kay says, “how wonderful!” And her eyes go to Nora’s face and stay there with not a hint of coolness or distain or embarrassment.

Anne begins to ask about Kay’s boys and where is everyone—when Kay interrupts.

“I knew a Nora…her husband died…she was my very best friend...”

Anne laughs and says “This is her,” and Nora also says who she is. Kay’s smile deepens and her gaze reflects only pleasure.

The other women at the table have begun to spoon in their thick creamy soup in small bowls. Nora says, “We don’t want to disturb your lunch…”

“No, Kay says, “I am just so happy to see you.” She grasps Anne’s arm and squeezes it, but her eyes, those age-lightened eyes, keep returning to Nora’s with the same almost tremulous look they’d held 30 or 40 years go when both were young, burdened with family worries, but clinging to each other for every kind of support.

And of course it hits Nora; it has almost from the beginning of seeing her old friend:

She’s forgotten. If memory is selective—which it must be—she’s forgotten what happened between them that drove them apart.

But there is no doubt that Nora and her family are remembered by Kay because she and Anne are now talking up a storm of reminiscences. Nora feels a melting in her breast, a release of tension, and almost, a feeling of pity.

She says to Kay, ‘I just celebrated by 82nd birthday.”

Kay laughs, her same sliding-scale laugh, and says, “Well, I had my 86th.”

By any measure, that is old.

They exchange phone numbers, Nora finding an old envelope in her purse which she gives to Kay to write upon. And then she and Anne leave, with pledges of “getting in touch and coming back to visit, etc.,” Kay anointing both of them with fervent looks.

Nora glances down at the envelope. Kay has written her phone number and “So happy to see you.”

She and Anne don’t speak until they are outdoors. “Amazing,” Nora says. “She’s forgotten she was mad at me.”

“Maybe you got it all wrong,’ Anne says. “What was it over, anyway?’

“You know, I think I’ve forgotten, too. One of the benefits of old age.”

They get in the car and wend out of the Gardens. Nora says, “But tomorrow, she may wake up and remember.”

“Will you see her again?” Anne asks. “I’d like to.”

“Maybe,” Nora says.

She envisions herself and Anne sitting with Kay, perhaps on the verandah overlooking the massed flower beds, the setting lovely, the sun a blessing on old bones, and their talking, lapping up the years, exhuming memories that make them laugh.

And Kay, with the sky’s clouds in her eyes, saying, “Whatever happened to that man you loved so desperately? The one you left your husband for?”

Starch in spine

2008-02-13T09:59:00.000-08:00

One of the country club ladies from her previous life, Sylvia, called Nora for lunch and they went to a pub down the street named P.C.’s. They had fish and chips, and Nora ate most of it which made her sleepy. She came back home and took a nap and forgot that Sara had invited her for tea with Mildred, who lives in a nursing home and whom Sara has adopted to do nice things for. When Nora awoke she had a phone message from Sara and she hurried and went to her apartment. There was Small Betty and Jolene and Mildred, Sara looking a bit depleted. She gave Nora a cup of lukewarm tea, and Nora went and sat next to Mildred, took her hand, and said hello and who she was.

Mildred is a warm, lovely lady, about 87 years old, and blind. It came out in their conversation that she knows someone Nora used to know years ago, a woman named Kay. Nora and Kay were best friends but Kay cut her dead when she confided her heart’s secret to her. Obviously, Kay couldn’t handle it.

It hurt Nora grievously and still does when she think of it. She did the next morning upon wakening because of seeing Mildred the day before. It made her angry all over again to think how Kay treated her when she entrusted her with such a tender bit of herself. Some thirty years later, the memory of it still scalded like acid. It also gave her the starch she needed not to feel badly over herself. Which she tends to do sometimes. Her thoughts run in crazy ways and she lacerates her spirit needlessly.

But now, a very funny thing has happened. Which proves that life has few closed chapters.

Nora saw Kay on Ash Wednesday, when she and her daughter Anne went to Mass in the lovely chapel at a retirement home named the Gardens of St. Francesca. Kay lives there and that is why Mildred knew her, when she lived there before she had to go into assisted living. Nora was aware Kay lived there and so was Anne, and Anne begged to see her after Mass. “Just for a few minutes, Mom. I’d love to see her. I remember so many good times we used to have at her house and with her kids.”

Nora sighed. Could she put herself through that again? Because it would not be the first time she had seen Kay in recent years. About five or six years ago, hearing from a mutual friend that Kay was at the Gardens, Nora gave in to her curiosity to see her. After all, it’d been some thirty years since they’d last been together, and what had happened between them had to be water under the bridge.

But, alas, not so. On this other visit to the lovely chapel, she went up to Kay after Mass. It had been easy to spot her because of her Indian black hair (actually, Irish black) among all the grey and white heads, and something about her bearing that had not changed. Nora said “Hello.” And when no immediate response came, added, “I’m Nora.”

“Yes, I know who you are,” Kay said. She permitted herself to be embraced but Nora sensed she held back. She was immediately sorry she’d come and wished to leave but, after all, good manners prevail, for both parties, and as they walked along into the vaulted interior of the Gardens—quite tony, much nicer than N’s place in the Twilight Zone--Kay, not showing much warmth, said it was lunchtime and invited Nora to stay. N could not see a graceful way to leave and, besides, she was tired of the shenanigans between them.

So she stayed for lunch and dutifully asked Kay about her family. Kay gave monosyllabic answers and did not ask anything of Nora which spoke volumes. It was an awful lunch; not the food, but the feelings engendered in Nora of rejection deja-vued all over again. Leaving at last, she swore “never again.”

But, five years later, here she was with her daughter wistfully pleading with her to see Kay, who’d been the avatar of her childhood, apparently.

What the hell, thought Nora. She could not say “I’ll wait in the car,” because it would make Anne wonder too much, and she was already curious as to what could possibly, so long ago, have come between two such good friends. “All right,” she said. “But she’ll be as unfriendly to me as ever so you do the talking.”

They found Kay in the spacious dining room, at a round table covered with a linen cloth and centered with a vase of flowers. Three other elderly women were with her.

The two outsiders approached, one eagerly and the other full of dread. And a rather amazing thing happened.

(To be continued)

Dear little house

2008-02-12T08:16:00.000-08:00

The other day Nora found something on the Internet that amazed and delighted her. It was akin to discovering a nugget of gold or a raw diamond in the mud. She takes off her hat to Mr. Google! Because, what she found when she idly put her term into the search machine, was something she thought totally remote of possibility, will-of-the-wispy, the stuff of dreams. She found where the words on an old sampler came from! Who wrote them!

To begin to appreciate this: Nora’s mother, who died when Nora was six years old, had sometime in her young life (for she’d never had an old one), worked a sampler. One of those old-fashioned ones that have sweet words and charming scenes cross-stitched in colored yarn. Nora treasured this old sampler. It had hung on the wall of Nora’s house when she’d been married raising her family. Later, it was on the wall of her divorcee’s bungalow and then subsequent dwelling places she found herself in through the decades.

The sampler contained several lines of a poem, followed by the initials “C.M.” Those were not Nora’s mother’s initials and this was puzzling. The poetry was above small houses on a higgledy-piggledy lane and read:

“Dear little house, dear shabby street, dear books and beds and food to eat. How feeble words are to express the facets of your tenderness.”

Words are magic; they have such power to invoke emotions. Who hasn’t lived in such a house or wished they had, and loved books and the comfort of bed and food. Especially hearts that are winsome and yearny. So Nora entered these words into Google’s limitless maw of knowledge.

And she got hits! Quite a few of them. Which led to actual pictures of the same sampler she had that had been in existence probably 90 years or so. And the identity of the mysterious C.M., the man who wrote those lines. A man who must’ve been pretty dear himself because the sampler sentiment was part of a collection of poetry in a book published in 1917 entitled “Songs for a Little House.” Most of the poems were about the very same things that enchanted Nora: the small facets that make up a life. Sunlight in a room, whether a fireplace will smoke or not, holding a child, a wife’s face as she sleeps. Things that some would call smaltzy that in reality compose what makes life so very sweet.

C.M. stood for Christopher Morley. He was also the author of the novel “Kitty Foyle” which became a movie with Ginger Rogers who won an Academy Award for her portrayal of a working-class gal in love with Dennis Morgan, a member of Philadelphia’s Main Line society.

The poems in the book are in the public domain and can be found at:

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main Page

if anyone cares to look. Of course, one must enter the book’s name and author.

A small emergency

2008-02-11T09:04:00.000-08:00

Sunday, Peggy, Small Betty, and Nora went to brunch after Mass at St. Elizabeth’s at a local diner. They all ordered the same breakfast—early bird special. It was two eggs any style, fried potatoes, ww toast and jam, and choice of ham, bacon or sausage. It was good. But before they were through eating, Small Betty got into distress. She began to fiddle with her oxygen tube in her nose and examine her portable tank she lays upon her walker kept close by. “I’m not getting any oxygen,” she said. Nora immediately got up and offered assistance. Betty disconnected the tubes at both ends, blew threw them, reattached the tubes with Nora’s help, and said, “Still nothing’s coming through. And I know there’s some in there. The gauge says there is.”

Oh, dear, what to do? Peggy looked rather catatonic, offering nothing. Nora had driven; the restaurant was about a mile away from the Twilight Zone. “Let’s get you back now,” she said. She could sense that Betty was beginning to panic a little.

“What about our breakfast and the bill?” Peggy said.

Um, um, um, Nora thought. Leave Peggy to deal with it, take Betty quickly and then have to retrieve Peggy?

Betty stood up, holding onto the table. “I’m going to black out,” she said.

Yikes! Nora threw her jacket around her shoulders while Peggy attempted to deal with the bill and her credit card, kind of eyeing the half-eaten eggs ruefully. The waitress came up to help, and in minutes they were out at N’s car where she slung Betty into the front seat like a sack of potatoes. She quickly folded the walker and stowed it in her trunk. Peggy squeezed into the back.

Nora did a U-turn on the busy street and soon they were rushing through the lobby of the Zone toward Betty’s apartment at the end of the hall. Nora felt a dew of perspiration break out on her. Betty couldn’t walk very fast because one foot splayed out. Nora went ahead with the key and opened the door. Inside, Betty flopped into a chair. Nora brought her the long coiled line from the big oxygen tank in the bathroom and flipped the switch. Betty put the nasal piece in and breathed. Color began to return to her cheeks and also the cheeks of the other two. Whew!

Moving on. Today, being Monday, might be a morning when Sara will call to ask if Nora wants to go to the rec center for aerobics class. Nora would be just as happy to skip it. She’s not very graceful in a class where you have to move to fast music; not exacty dance, but “jig.” That is, put your right foot out and your left foot in, throw out your arms and hands and shake your booty, etc. Nora used to be fairly graceful years ago but since she’s been lazy for the last few years, isn’t too physically coordinated. Not that she couldn’t pick it up if she tried. But she doesn’t like to exhibit her dorky moves before other people who do pretty well. Last time she was behind a slim, grey-haired man who was very adept at the moves. Maybe she’ll practice at home.

What’s on the docket this week?

Coffee talk tomorrow, yoga Wednesday, big birthday party Thursday.

On the giveaway bench: a grocery sack full of old underwear!

End of the week scrapbag

2008-02-08T09:24:00.000-08:00

Yoga this morning. At the ungodly hour of 7:30. Until 9. The teacher, Walt, is a long, lean, hunk of Marine. He used to be one. He’s got as much flesh on him as though his diet consisted of lettuce leaves and capers with a few nonpareils sprinkled on. But he’s very kind. He laughs a lot but it’s a funny not-related-to-anything kind of hysterical laugh. One feels one has to laugh along with him which is sometimes a chore. Oh well. He is nice.

They have a new resident. Her name is Donna. She’s eighty, the mother of nine children. She is short, pear-shaped, has untidy long grey hair, a large nose, bad teeth, and kind of a prognathous jaw that causes her words to sound funny. But that doesn’t stop her from talking almost unceasingly, about herself, her family early and late, etc., etc. All with a slight philosophical bent, e.g., “The failure to see the beauty of the world is criminal…”

Nora made the mistake of befriending her and yesterday afternoon she rang her bell. Nora invited her in, gave her a cup of tea, she sat in the tapestry chair, and sat and sat and sat as slowly the light faded from the living room. Finally, thinking it might convey a hint, Nora turned on a lamp.

Why do people do that? Aren’t they aware of it? And never a word or question about her, her life, interests, family, etc. Nor a word about her apartment—“this is nice, who did all the paintings, etc.?” Oh well. Now she will have to extricate herself from this relationship. Nora told Sara about her and this morning feels she is a gossip because it was mean to tell. She will give up gossip for Lent.

It is nice to be old and have plenty of time to do absolutely nothing or to fill the time with simple things like shopping, lunching, librarying, rec centering, chatting, playing cards, or just lobbying and telling corny jokes. They are all in the vestibule of Heaven and it is a pleasant place to be.

Little Bruno is there, swallowed up by his overcoat, his eyes pale blue and sunken, his beak of a nose bleached bone, his hair like remnants of stubble in the fields, but giving a smile and a “Better,” when asked how he is. He is probably next in line to go through the door lined with pearls which maybe are the tears of souls that have to wave goodbye.

Jewel, Bruno’s wife of over sixty years, hovers close by, her fat reddish face swollen with anxiety, her eyes round and alert for tell-tale signs, her rotundness seeming to be less in her matched apricot-colored polyester overblouse and elastic waist pants. Oh, how they had used to dance, how they had laughed, how they’d enjoyed sex with one another! Those things, those good things, seemed to play around the two of them like fairie fire.

(Got a little carried away here with purple prose.)

Birdie's going-away party

2008-02-07T07:52:00.000-08:00

Birdie’s going-away party was held yesterday. In case people haven’t been informed already, little Birdie, who’s lived here for five years, but whose heart was ever in the East, is returning there to be with her son and his family. She has two or is it three grandkiddies whose ages are not known whom she will be able to see. Not much of the arrangements is known, that is, whether she will live with her son’s family or not, and the latter seems more likely because Birdie, as dear as she is—she hasn’t a mean bone in her body—would drive anyone in close association with her for very long over the edge. Here in the Twilight Zone she had her own small apartment, a studio, to retire to (and they to theirs).

Also, there is the not so small matter of her son having converted to Islam so it could be a little like the Gaza Strip there, Birdie being Jewish and all. There is also her garlic-chewing propensity and small black cigar smoking which does a dual number on her breath. But love may conquer all. Plus, of course, her encroaching senility. Sometimes Birdie’s eyes, which are plum colored—you know all the gradations of color a plum has: not merely a deep reddish brown but also purple and a touch of green-gage—waver when she is talking to you as though their moorings in her face were uncertain.

And now, to her party. It seemed like everyone showed up which doesn’t always happen in the TZ. People who hadn’t come out of their lairs for weeks on end, like the ancient fellow, Archie, with the calcified toes (he always wears sandals and no socks; one sandal is wrapped around with duct tape), Agnes, limping painfully on her new plastic knee (if she could just lose a few pounds but it’s hard, of course), the other half of Walt, his reclusive wife, Marie, Cass, who distains such gatherings usually, with Peggy of course velcroed to his hip. Seeing a bunch of them with whom she’d formerly consorted, Peggy gave a vacant smile and a wave of her hand like a tattered flag. As if they care if she sits with Cass!

And the Spanish dancer lady, Carmelita Castanetta, was there with her keyboard upon which she proceeded to make the most devilishly high-pitched sounds like screams of souls in torment; oh, well, it was music and music was needed for Birdie’s last hurrah. For everyone wanted to see her get up and dance all by her self one last time. And shy as she is, she obliged, and that was a moving sight. Everyone clapped and smiled at the sight of the tiny figure get up and do her Lindy. This time not in jeans, size XS, but in a pair of white pants, and a pretty white top with a design and her medium-high heeled sandals with stockings on because the seams showed at the open toes.

Oh, how they are going to miss that whenever they hear music in the future, especially, “New York, New York.”

And, here’s the touching part: Birdie has ever needed a partner and it was assumed she’d have to wait until she got to Heaven to have one, but she wasn’t on the floor more than a few minutes when one of the men, Gary, who is 89 years old, married to Trixi, who is the same age, a truly kind-hearted gentleman, pushed aside his walker, got up and went to the softly swaying Birdie and like a lover long-awaited, enfolded her in his arms! He held her tightly as they dipped and swayed to Carmelita’s unearthly sounds, and it was lovely. Everyone cheered and eyes dampened. And there was ice cream to go with the cake for a change! Godspeed, Birdie…

Another spat

2008-02-06T13:12:00.000-08:00

Last Thursday night was game night. But it was also the night when about a half-dozen residents gathered around a table in the activity room and ate cake, drank coffee, and visited with one another.

A woman named Wilma who wanted to play a game and was waiting for Tillie and Nora and perhaps one or two others to show up, got into a tiff with Inez who belonged to the cake-eating group.

As told to Nora the next morning because she hadn’t been there—she’d instead gone to Tillie’s apartment to see if, indeed, they were going to play a game—and Tillie said she guessed not because she hadn’t heard from anyone, while all the time Wilma was waiting in the activity room…but that was just a miscommunication.

So Nora and Tillie missed all the fireworks. But Sara was told by Wilma and passed it on to Nora.

What happened was that Inez told Wilma her group (should they have ever come) couldn’t play a game because they were there first, the cake-eaters. Wilma said something like, oh we have a right to be here too, and Inez raised her fists toward Wilma! Sweet little Inez!

Wilma was surprised and pulled back in time to avoid any punches should one have been thrown (highly unlikely), and said to Inez, “Watch out, I know Judo.”

Further conversation between the two of them is not known. But Inez, reportedly, coming to her senses, as addled as they are, went to her apartment and selected a card from a collection and wrote a conciliatory message upon it and returned to the activity room and gave it to Wilma. Wilma then left and that was the end of it.

But the afternoon of the next day, Tillie came up to Nora’s, rang the bell because Nora had forgotten to put up her nap sign and was still napping but slightly awake, so she got up anyway and let Tillie in. Her bra was undone and she turned away from Tillie to hook it. When she was put together she listened to Tillie’s version of what had happened which differed slightly in that blows were actually struck. Nora did not interrupt Tillie and tell her that she’d already heard the story from Sara, in slightly different form. So she listened to it again and made appropriate comments like “Gad,” and “How bizarre.”

Today Nora is making a Quiche Lorraine for Jolene who is moving into another apartment, the one where Big Betty, who “passed,” had lived. God rest her soul.

What else? More snow yesterday but the three ladies went swimming anyway, Nora, who is used to snow, doing the driving. Then they had coffee at Tenn Street and came back to the TZ where Nora and Sara finished an interrupted Scrabble game of several evenings ago. Nora brought two blueberry cupcakes and they ate them while they played.

Sara put down the word “fey.”

“Do you know what it means?” Nora asked, knowing full-well that most people had the wrong conception of “fey” because she’d had.

Sara said, “phony,” then amended it to “crazy.”

Nora smugly shook her head. “Fated,” she said.

“Oh—“ Sara said, “really?”

“Yep. Get your dictionary, the real one and look it up,” which Sara did.

She read: “…fated…to die…a sense of impending death…”

Nora said, “Like Morgan Le Fey in King Arthur.” Boy, showing off.

“Umm,” Sara said.

They played for over two hours, talking all the time they were supposed to be thinking of good words to put on the board.

She would have to remember to Google Morgan Le Fey to see if she knew what in the hell she’d talked about. There could be no connection between the “feys.”

St. Louis woman and apron strings

2008-02-05T08:38:00.000-08:00

Today is Sara’s birthday. (She grew up in St. Louis.) She is 78. Nora made her a cake yesterday, a carrot cake that she has yet to ice. But since it’s only 5:41 a.m. this very moment, she has plenty of time to do that. She made the carrot cake because that was what first began their friendship; Nora brought Sara, who hadn’t come to one of the potlucks, the remains of one on a glass cake platter. Nora also has a card for her that has a picture of blue dishes and flowers in an old white painted cupboard. She is thinking of writing on the inside, which bears only the words “Have a Happy Birthday” something on this order:

“Blue dishes and flowers and scrabble for hours are some of my favorite things. And chocolate too…et vous.”

But does that sound too…whatever? Well, time to think about it.

Ralph with the one leg asked Nora if she sewed and when she said she did, asked if she would mind running up the seams on an apron for him. He does a lot of cooking, especially his famous chili for which he was nosed out of winning a prize recently by a shameless person who only opened cans but that is another story that’s already been told. Ralph also does handy-man work around here so presumably needs an apron for that. He brought her a big piece of khaki-colored material of a sturdy weave that he’d cut to match an old threadbare denim apron he had. With the strings all cut out and everything so all Nora had to do was press hems on them with her iron, which she did yesterday. Then she set up the sewing machine she’d borrowed from Peggy and began to sew.

But drat, she had trouble threading the danged thing, trying to follow the diagram in the instruction book that must’ve been drawn by an Asian teenager seeking to amuse his friends and make fun of round-eyed imperialist dogs. When she finally managed it, she hardly could get the thread through the needle with her arthritic fingers to say nothing of her failing eye sight. When she finally got the end of the thread through, she lost it trying to grasp it. The air turned pink with her mild cursing. At last, she sewed one of the straps but the machine seemed to be chain-stitching. She would’ve asked Peggy who must've used her own machine at one time or other but could guess what Peggy would say:

“Oh—“ (long pause.) “I don’t remember.”

Sara, when told of Nora’s difficulties, offered to “run it up” for her but Nora said no thanks, she’d sew the bloody thing herself or die trying.

Birdie’s son has come to fetch her and is staying in her studio apartment with her. She sleeps in a chair, people wonder where he sleeps. He is rather strange-looking. Nora hadn’t seen him but Sara had and said, “He looks unusual.” Nora did catch a glimpse of him yesterday evening. He looks like Birdie’s son is the best description. He is tiny, with a thin, long grey beard but he has a boyish-looking face. Everyone wishes them “God Speed.” But there will be a going-away party for her first.

Nora and Sara sneak out

2008-02-04T08:23:00.000-08:00

When someone goes somewhere, like to lunch, dinner, a movie, or even to the bank, grocery, or thrift store (and comes back with packages), they kind of have to go on the sly. It can be appreciated that with 65 people in the Twilight Zone, half of whom don’t own cars or are able to drive, and everyone suffering degrees of cabin fever, such excursions are ripe cause for envy.

There are four doors to the Zone: the main entry into the lobby, the back patio door, and doors on the west and east wings. (Sometimes, these latter doors get hung up and can’t be opened either entering or exiting.)

Yesterday, Sara and Nora went to a matinee at the nearby Cineplex. Making their plans, both mentioned other people who might want to see the movie. “Evan might,” Sara said to which Nora gave a verbal shrug. She thought he was getting vacant, Sara didn’t, but it was okay. However, the night before, Nora and Tillie went for fish and chips (splitting one order because it was so large and Tillie said “you still get the same amount of chips.”) During the meal Tillie said she’d like to see the movie that Nora had already made plans for to see with Sara.

But, as Nora told Sara, she’s been to movies before with Tillie and, to put it bluntly, she’s no fun. Number one, she’s deaf as a post and doesn’t wear “aids,” her butt is so boney she can’t sit for very long, and she always “has” to go out to smoke. Plus, Sara, with all her graciousness, does not find Tillie the most scintillating of companions even though, knowing N’s fondness for her, she makes a valiant effort. But Tillie, whose middle name is Perversity, sensing the Lady of the Manor, often plays up her trailer-trash likeness.

Nora felt it best to keep the threads of her life in the Zone from getting too inter-tangled.

However, shortly before movie time, Sara called to ask if Nora had mentioned their plans to Small Betty. “She’s just phoned me and I told her I was about to go out the door.”

“Yikes,” Nora said and that she had not and suggested they leave by the west door instead of the lobby entrance.

Betty was a sweetheart but it got tiresome to deal with her Rollator. Besides, S and N enjoyed conversing with each other and after the movie perhaps having a drink and snack.

It took a Master’s Degree in Diplomacy to live happily in the Twilight Zone.

The west door wouldn’t open! Nora and Sara pushed but no go. So they had no choice but to go back through the lobby and out the front door. They approached it like cops making a raid crying “Clear” “Clear” as they advanced around corners.

Nora saw the wheels of a Rollator and put out a cautious hand; but a step further on revealed it belonged to Zora. And then they were out the front door undetected. Whew!

Inside the car, Nora was inclined to be philosophical about their evasion. But Sara fretted a bit.

“Well, we can’t charter a limo whenever we want to do something,” Nora said.

“But what will I tell Betty if she asks tomorrow?” Sara said. People usually asked how it was spent as if the weekends held any more excitement than the rest of the time.

“Just say you were out with Nora.”

“You mean…?”

“Yes.”

“My daughter.”

“Yes. How convenient is that, to have a daughter named after me?”

“It was my mother’s name,” Sara said.

“But still,” Nora said. She’ll have to deal with Tillie’s third degree. But she’ll think about it tomorrow.

Last night was their poker night

2008-02-01T08:29:00.000-08:00

Shelta showed up as did Peggy, Nora, Sara, Fred, and…no Tillie, the ex-pit boss, their leader. Tillie had said she was bringing wine and for them to bring cheese and crackers, which they did, Fred even adding a plate of salami. Where was Tillie?

“I better go see,” Nora said.

Peggy said, “Maybe she’s asleep.”

That was Tillie’s way, to nod off in her recliner chair in which she sat just about 24/7 watching the shopping channel. So Nora went through the lobby to Tillie’s and rapped on the door. She was answered only by Taco Belle’s little yap, but the door was unlocked so Nora went in to see…Tillie sawing off the zzzz’s in her recliner, her mouth an elongated “O.”

“Tillie, Tillie, we’re waiting for you, c’mon now.” Nora had to shake her to get her to wake from the land of Nod. Tillie grabbed her wine bottle and her box of coins and they went to join the others.

They played either five-card draw with jacks or better to open or seven-card stud with deuces, treys or one-eyed jacks wild. They’d each put in $2. Nora won 1 penny, Shelta 85 cents, Tillie lost 56 cents and Peggy came out about even. Peggy of course never remembered to ante or what a full house or flush was.

This morning the group is again going swimming to the rec center where there are sights to be seen in the woman’s locker room. But only the most sex-starved maniac would want to see them. Nora has overcome her modesty and now washes off the chlorine water in the group shower. She still has a bit of persnicketyness left about her, though. It was the younger gals that kind of got her. Most of them thought nothing of parading around like moving stacks of fleshy globules. One, looking to be about 30 at the most, dressed in the same cubicle the ladies from the Zone were in, and she seemed to take forever to do something at her locker, standing with her bare backside to Nora, who was putting on her shoes and socks below her fully-clothed form.

The young woman’s skin was orangey colored. She was well-proportioned if a bit oversized, but she didn’t have any flaws or blemishes which was rather fascinating. Then the young woman sat down, still in her birthday suit, facing Nora, still tying her shoes, and proceeded to slowly, somewhat languorsly, rub lotion onto herself. She was also the friendly type and engaged them in conversation which Tillie took willingly up, and Nora tried to attend but was a bit distracted wondering how this young person could be so unconscious of her nakedness. It was rather a bit much, all there before them. Oh well…

Tillie writes creditors

2008-01-31T08:44:00.000-08:00

Tillie omposed a letter to send to her creditors, of whom, she told Nora, there are about six who keep calling her day and night to ask when she’s “going to take care of this.” Tillie recently has been approved for Section 8 which attests that she doesn’t any discretionary income (which fits because she has no discretion when it comes to income). How she got the six credit cards should be a mystery but it isn’t, given the urgings of Visa, MasterCard, and the various large conglomerate banks to have people use their credit. Not a day goes by but one doesn’t receive an offer and is already approved.

There are lots of people like Tillie who haven’t a lick of sense when it comes to borrowing money. And who are poor, who’ve been poor most of their lives, so dangling the carrot in front of them is practically a criminal act. Tillie took her handwritten letter to Nora to have her type it so she could photocopy it and send out to make the phone calls stop, which is her right to do so by law. Here is what she wrote:

“It has come to my attention that you have been hassering me—which is against the law—over the remaining bill I owe you. When these bills were made I was fine and in fairly good health trying to pay you back. Then I suffered a stroke and had a credit co. help me. I had to stop it, because I am living on a fixed income, Social Sec., and needed the extra money they were charging me. I still as of now have no extra money and barely enough for food. I’m very sorry for the inconvenience I have caused you and please help me to resolve this.”

It actually sounded more convincing than the letter Nora wrote for her.

Nora is thinking about replacing the picture of the child on the pony downstairs with the one of herself in the same pose at the same age just to fool the old people of whose number and mental capacity she is one. But Susan would probably have a fit.

N visited yesterday with a new person, a lovely woman named Callie, who grew up in England but has lived here a long time. She still has her accent. Her favorite lunch: a cup of tea, yogurt, and a cookie. No wonder she’s so slim. She is extremely reserved, likes her priv-a-see. She hasn’t come to any of the functions. No wonder, with the store-bought cake they serve with the grody icing.

Trivial pursuits

2008-01-30T08:20:00.000-08:00

Yesterday evening, Tillie and Nora went to Jodi’s Burger Heaven to get a couple of their six-inchers. They also got fries and chocolate shakes. Tillie with her tiny tummy could only eat about half of her burger, or three inches, but Nora gamely finished it all except for the outer edges. Small Betty had asked them to bring her a six-inch sandwich with cheese and they did although Tillie said that with Small Betty’s expanding girth they should’ve brought her the four-incher no matter what Betty said. Nora liked it well enough. The burger reminded her strongly of Woolworth’s hamburgers when she was a kid of about ten in Oklahoma and her grandmother took her and her brothers and two cousins downtown “bumming.” They’d see a movie and then go to F.W.’s for a late lunch. The burger at Jodi’s was just as wafer-thin as those of her youth with the same crispiness which with the dill pickle was delish.

Quite a few people in the lobby today: Cass, Red-Faced Jim, Inez (wearing her golfing hat and housecoat that so upsets Jolene who says it makes it look like a nursing home), sharp-tongued Molly, Fred, Birdie in her striped turtleneck she never not wears, and Peggy closeby Cass. Cass, it is rumored, has failed the written part of his driver’s test. Peggy is especially anxious for him to re-get a license so he can chauffeur her around. She has got to be the world’s worst driver.

Tillie says “It’s only a matter of time…” She means when Peggy kills someone or herself.

They played a kind of “trivia,” dredging up old names from the past.

Tillie started it by saying “Who was Alice Faye married to? He was a big band leader.”

“Tex Beneke,” Cass said.

“Not Harry James,” Nora said.

“No, no, no, Tillie said. “C’mon, c’mon, who was it?” Her eyes flashed as though if they didn’t come up with the answer pretty quickly they’d all get ten lashings.

Nora said, “Phil Harris,” and Tillie exclaimed happily, “Right, right.”

Cass threw out the name “Johnny Weissmuller,” to which Nora replied, “Me Jane, you Tarzan.” It was as silly as silly can be.

Peggy, whose mind doesn’t run easily to trivia, got up and said she had to go make her turkey soup. Other people came and went, Polly, Ralph, and Martha. None of them had a lot to say except Tillie, Cass, and Nora, and they kept on, dredging up old names from their youth. Sara came down on her way out to the store and asked if any one needed anything. Nora should’ve told her whipped cream because Tillie gave her some lady fingers she wanted her to make an ice box dessert with. Then Nora said she had to take her nap and they all got up and rode up in the elevator together, even Tillie although she lives on the first floor, which they reminded her of. They had been silly as kids. But it was nice.

The lady fingers Tillie gave her were ersatz. They crumbled into powder. Tillie must’ve bought them at the dollar store a year ago. Nora was glad she didn’t have Sara get any whipping cream.

Archie's birthday

2008-01-29T09:58:00.000-08:00

Joy in the Twilight Zone! The Ancient Mariner celebrated his 90th birthday! His family held a party for him in the activity room and most of the residents attended. His daughter and two grandchildren staged it. She was marvelous, had everyone in the room introduce themselves and tell how long they’d lived in the TZ and what they’d done in their lives.

This had never been done in the TZ before, at least to Nora’s knowledge. Some of the careers mentioned were: working at the Pentagon during the war, being a police 911 operator, teaching school, raising a family, being a photographer, working in the grocery store for 25 years, etc. Nora said she’d been an “Inquiring Reporter” and she still loved to ask questions.

The birthday boy, Archie, wore a diamond earring in one ear. He is a small, dapper man with a lovely way about him, like a “boulevardier” of old. His wife was also there, having been brought from a nursing home. She obviously was out of it, poor lady, but seemed to enjoy the cake. And ice cream! (The management hardly ever serves ice cream.) Archie is one of four who are ninety; one lady named Iris is 92, Edgar is 90, and Cleo will be 90 in August. And if Nora lives there for much longer, she too will be celebrating hers. Yikes!

Nora took some trash down to put in the dumpster and seeing Sara waiting in the lobby to be picked up by her daughter, stopped to visit with her. Little Shiko came along and stole the trash! That is the trouble with saint-hood, you have to always be good. Nora yelled at her to drop it but the tiny one darted away with the sack so Nora gave chase. She cornered her and covered her tiny body with her own, leaning over her to force her to give the trash back. But she kept a grip on it like death, and in the interests of not having the sack break open and her personal trashy life exposed to Sara’s glimpse and a few others, Nora yielded.

N tells S why she helps people

2008-01-28T10:44:00.000-08:00

What is it with Nora? What motivates her to do the things she does? If she could change her motivation would she not change her behavior? This is her new thought.

Friday, after their swimming aerobics class, she and Sara went to have coffee at one of their favorite hangouts, the Tenn Street. And in the due course of things, Nora trotted out her new revelation about Sara. She led into it adroitly, mentioning her good talk with her daughter Anne. “I had a revelation about her,” she said. “You know, she’s had a lot of trauma in her life.” Yes, Sara remembered because Nora had told her.

“I am one of her biggest fans,” Sara said.

“Well,” Nora expanded, “she told me she helps people because in doing so it relieves a lot of her own pain.”

She had Sara’s attention. She went on to say that in Anne’s work at the veterans’ nursing home, she did much more than serve in the dining room. She listened to the old people, made sure they were comfortable in their chairs and beds with proper pillows and blankets, and comforted them in many ways. Nora was practically describing Sara to herself.

But Sara listened as though she did not see herself in what Anne did.

Sara was, thought Nora, completely hooked. And now to set the hook. Why, oh why, couldn’t she have left it where it was? She was to ask herself that later.

“Don’t you recognize yourself?” she asked, gently.

Sara thought a moment. She was obviously hesitant to claim such a role for herself, especially when she’d said to Nora about Anne, “I think people like that are sainted.”

Nora steadily tightened the line. “You are like that.”

Sara made as if to make the little “poof” sound and expression with her mouth she’d copied from Nora signifying “Oh, c’mon now…” But instead she said, “I wonder if there is something in my life I feel guilty over that I’m trying to atone for.”

All right. She as much admitted she was as Nora described Anne, one of the world’s great helpers.

So Nora jerked the line without further ado. “No, you know what it is, of course.”

Sara looked at her, all innocent: “What?”

“Oh, you must know,” Nora said. And Nora had the good grace to put her hands up for a moment over her eyes as if, at this late stage of what she’d set out to do for the last 24 hours, it was now something she didn’t want to do, out of some nicety of feeling.

“What?” Sara persisted. “Now, you have to tell me.”

And so Nora did. “Because of your little boy whom you lost. By helping others you relieve that pain.”

And before she’d finished these words, the arrow in Sara’s heart caused her eyes to respond with a sudden freshet of tears. She wept all over again as though the cause of the pain had just occurred.

Nora immediately felt a stab of contrition. She shouldn’t have! It was manipulative, almost. And why? What for? Did she get her kicks doing this to such a gentle, loving person as Sara? Ah, dear, who knows what makes people do what they do? Only the angels and they aren’t talking.

No more was said on the subject and they returned to the Twilight Zone. Later Nora gave Sara a piece of the spinach quiche she’d made, and Sara brought her a small vase to put blue hyacinths in when again they bloom in the spring. It was on the tip of Nora’s tongue to apologize for “stirring up sorrow” but she decided, no doubt wisely, to say no more about it.

It was words that got her into trouble as always. She must learn to keep her mouth closed, set a guard around it. Almost every indiscretion she’d ever committed came through that portal. And now she was over eighty years old and still had not learned. She vowed to “observe boundaries, be more appropriate, use her common sense.”

This same thinking pervaded her night’s sleep, her dreams, and her first thoughts when she awoke. Was she being too critical of herself? Peut-etre. The thing that bothered her the most was her “boring-in” on Sara. “Playing her.” Being devious and, yes, manipulative, plucking Sara’s tender heartstrings that way. She had no right. It was not right. Between people, between friends, there were certain lines one should not cross. She would do better. She would try harder. It was a good lesson to have learned at this late stage of her life. Well, better late than never.

N and her daughter visit

2008-01-25T13:04:00.000-08:00

Nora had a wonderful visit with her daughter Anne the other day. Somehow, they got on the subject of the things that happen in a person’s life that make them sad. Not a very unusual topic because everyone has something. Living in the Twilight Zone has made Nora realize that. She’s had her knocks but the others could line up theirs alongside.

And so has Anne. It hasn’t been said before, but Anne has been a drug addict. A hopeless one. At least, that’s what everyone said about her. Family members, concerned friends, even professional people who had been consulted. “It has been our experience that those in her situation… seldom…recover.”

Everyone said it, in fact, except Nora.

Anne had started with pot, went on to speed—this, when she was sixteen—followed by a few years of different things Nora doesn’t even know about, when she started popping babies, one after the other, with druggie men, two of them black, not that there’s anything wrong with that. And then, with life as a single mother being so hard and all, she got onto crack cocaine, and when she met up with a man who used heroin, that too. Anne has been in and out of jails and the hospital so often that one could wonder how she had time to have five children.

One baby was born in the prison ward of a hospital. A judge put her there after she was arrested for soliciting when she was eight months pregnant. She’s been beaten up by drug dealers in deals gone bad, been in auto accidents, was practically if not in reality, raped, and a host of other indignities heaped upon her whose sordidness can hardly be imagined.

But today she is clean and has been for over fourteen years, thanks to the grace of God, her mother’s prayers, and Narcotic Anonymous. Anne is an exceedingly good person, humble, kind, loving, with a kind of crazy, sweet street wisdom. She’s always worked menial jobs, as a waitress, cook, cleaning woman, banquet server, and never had much of a formal education. But she has amazing streaks of perception in her like veins of gold (although she can still be crazy, too, at times, but not like of old; now, over things like politics and the environment).

Her current job is in a nursing home for veterans. She is very good with sick, old people who need cheering up and hugs. In fact, that’s what the conversation with her mother was about. Anne has become a “helper,” a Good Samaritan, one of those singular people—just like Nora’s friend, Sara—who cannot pass by someone who gives off the slightest clue of needing help.

This became clear to Nora as Anne talked about her life and her recent doings. Nora said, “I have a friend here like you.”

Anne went on to say something about how helping others helps her with her own pain. Nora listened, a light bulb coming on in her brain. Not with a sudden “click” but as though it had several intensities or powers. Could what Anne was describing be the reason for Sara’s overweening proclivity to minister to the world’s ills? To relieve her own pain? And what was that pain? A very great one. An inconsolable one. A two-year-old son who had drowned. Unimaginable! It’s even hard to put down here.

But how come she, Nora, was not like that? She’s had her inconsolable losses, her mother when she was only six years old, her little brother when she was ten, the love of her life when she was forty-four, and then, in her sixties, her son, her only, winsome, bonny lad, to a brain injury.

In fact, Nora put the question to Anne in a plaintive voice: “Why aren’t I like that? Like you? Like Sara? (For she’d told Anne about her friend.)

And Anne knew why or it sounded like she did. She said, “Because you went inward with your pain, not outward like your friend and me. You’ve kept yours all inside.”

Peut-etre.

Ah, much to mentally chew upon. She had gone inward, or somewhere, that was true, because she wasn’t all that eager to help others although she did when their needs could not be ignored. But she wasn’t at the ready like Sara was. She felt Anne had nailed it about her friend. Who may not even know that about herself and probably shouldn’t have it pointed out to her. There are boundaries. But could be told obliquely if Nora related her conversation with her daughter to her. They were going swimming this morning after which they always had coffee. And over coffee they had to talk about something.

Just friends

2008-01-24T12:20:00.000-08:00

Peggy, on a bitterly cold night, walked into the new Starbucks and went up to Cass and Li-Li sitting at a table drinking coffee. Without any preface or by-your-leave, she said “Thanks a lot!” And stormed out.

All this is secondhand, of course. (Too bad no one was there to see the expressions on the faces of Cass and Li-Li. Peggy’s face was probably that peculiar, damp, baby-color red it gets when she is steamed.) Now, why was this woman, who just turned seventy-nine, doing such a strange thing? The temperature had to have been hovering around zero, for they’d had a nasty spell of mid-January weather that practically locked-down the whole city. Before that was a ton of snow that, of course, was still on the ground, only turned to ice. The Starbucks isn’t far from their building, but still Peggy would’ve had to walk along some ice-covered paths.

Nora was told about this by Tillie when she went to visit her in the mid-morning of the next day.

Tillie was in her usual outfit, flannel pajama pants and a tee shirt with a knitted afghan wrapped around her shoulders, in her recliner, watching the shopping channel.

Nora usually opens the unlocked door without knocking because Taco Belle announces visitors. Seeing who hers was, Tillie rolled those agate eyes and motioned Nora to come in. Nora settled herself on the couch, petting Taco Belle because if she didn’t give her some attention, the Chihuahua was all over her like a human child. Nora could tell Tillie had some new bit of gossip for her.

“Okay, spill it,” she said, just like she might’ve said sixty-two years ago in someone’s dorm room at Stillwater, OK. “Who’s smooching who? Did she let him get to first base? French kisses, Roman hands and Russian fingers?”

Tillie began: “Peggy came in last night, late. She looked like she was just about to cry but didn’t. She said she and Cass were through.” And Tillie did her usual, stopped talking, Nora’s signal to lean forward and prod her a bit.

She mock-dropped her jaw. “Wot hoppened?!” And Tillie told her the above ‘graph, quoting: ‘Thanks a lot!’

“Okay,” Nora said, sitting back. “So Cass and Li-Li go for coffee to Starbucks. What’s wrong with going for coffee?” Tillie shrugged. “I thought they were just friends,” Nora said, meaning Cass and Peggy. “That’s what she said, remember, ‘we’re just friends.’”

“She got upset,” Tillie said.

“But Cass and Li-Li are friends too,” Nora said, “and they’ve gone around together, like to eat at Basic Foods and stuff.”

“I know,” Tillie said, which implied to Nora that, once again, their dear Southern Belle friend was off her rocker over a man.

“Good Lord,” Nora said. “What is wrong with that woman, at her age? Why is she so needy? Like her whole identity is tied up with having a man. That is so pathetic.” Tillie nodded. Nora added, “How embarrassing that must’ve been for Cass and Li-Li. I’ll bet he’ll he hiding for days.” She shook my head and would’ve clicked her tongue if she could’ve. Was she back in high school? Maybe junior high.

Later on in the day, Nora saw Peggy. In fact, about 4 pm, she and Tillie and Shelta and Nora bundled up and walked over to Starbucks, where Peggy had made her OK Corral stand the night before. Tillie forged ahead leaving Peggy and Nora together, and Peggy took the opportunity to say to her, apropos of nothing (obviously she had nothing else on her mind): “Cass and I are through.”

Hmm. Should Nora reveal Tillie had already told her? Probably, but she didn’t. “Ohh—“ she said, in her best soap opera voice.

“Yes,” Peggy said.

They went on a few paces. “What happened?” Nora asked, knowing full well.

Peggy said, maddeningly obliquely, “I won’t compete.”

Nora made a lyric leap and said, “But I thought you and Cass were just friends.”

Peggy didn’t reply, perhaps too inwardly stricken to do so. By that time they’d reached Starbucks. Nora could tell by the look on Peggy’s face she could crater at any moment and to avoid any more public displays from her in their new coffee-drinking venue, she didn’t pursue the subject.

More later, perhaps.

On Nora's birthday

2008-01-23T15:21:00.000-08:00

Sara, Jolene, Tillie and Peggy took Nora to lunch at a nearby Cuban restaurant for her 82nd birthday. Everyone but Nora, who couldn’t shake her depression-years/thrift-store mentality, ordered the orange roughy ($14.95) and Mojitoes ($5.95). She ordered a combination Mexican plate ($9.95) and a glass of house wine (probably $3.50). Even though the others were paying for her and urged her to indulge. Finally, she said, “Heck fire, it’s my birthday, okay.”

Tillie wore a tan knit long skirt and tan top, dangly gold jewelry and eye makeup. Peggy, a pretty pink velour suit, Jolene was in a turquoise ensemble, and Sara a long grey tweed skirt with a grey jacket edged in red and blue. Nora had on black velvet pants and a grey, black, and white top that had sequins on it and a screen print of skyscrapers. (It has to be seen.)

“I can’t believe I am 82,” she said. “The oldest of all of us.”

“But you’re the healthiest,” Sara said. “So you’ll probably outlive us all.”

Nora made a face. “I saw on the Internet that the oldest person in the world just died. She was an Indian in South America and was like 116.”

“Did they have her picture?” Tillie asked.

“Yes, and she looked a little like you. She was a smoker.”

Tillie gave her one of her looks. Before their meal was over, she would have to go outside to light up. She’d take two or three fast puffs, then snub out the cigarette on a nearby flowerpot or brick wall and put the nasty thing in her jacket pocket to smoke later. Like they used to do in high school, stealing drags in the girls’ john.

They all had birthday cards for her. Nora beamed and smiled her pleasure.

Sara wrote “I hope you know how much I value your friendship.” That was good to know.

Tillie wrote that Nora was a “dear friend and I love you.”

Jolene and Peggy gave her cards about how sexy, gorgeous and intelligent she was getting to be. But it was a shame that everyone’s hearing and eyesight weren’t good anymore.

Before the meal was o’er, they had a vivid reminder of how far they were advanced in years.

A young man came into the restaurant and brought a cry of pleasure from Jolene. “My favorite grandson!”

Nora turned to see a most unusual looking young fellow heading toward their table. He looked to be about seventeen, was at least six and a half feet tall but perhaps this was because he was no bigger around than, say, Scarlett O’Hara, whose waist, at eighteen inches, was “the smallest in three counties.” He wore black jeans with a wide metal studded belt that rode at least six inches below his waist and an oversize black screen-printed tee.

But it was his physical attributes that were so arresting. He had hair as black a crow’s wing, cut on the diagonal, straight, feathered just a bit so that it hung over his left eye, all but obscuring it. The visible eye was a startling bright blue. The lad had high pink color in his cheeks and full, pouty lips. He sat down beside his grandma Jolene without much of a smile for anyone but one of those expressions seen in Calvin Klein ads of impossibly, irritatingly, gorgeous young people.

Expressions that made Nora want to adorn their faces with blackheads and mustaches and shaggy underarm hair on the girls. He is one spoiled rotten kid, she thought, exactly like maybe his grandmother.

Apparently, the meeting was prearranged for Jolene pulled out her checkbook, wrote one out and handed it to him. When he left, earlier than they did, and, surprisingly, stopped beside her on the other side of the booth to say goodbye, Nora reached out and attempted to pull his pants up. He gave her the ghost of a smile.

Tillie depressed

2008-01-22T08:15:00.000-08:00

Nora went downstairs to see her after spending the morning feeling top-notch, happy, like someone singing “Oh, what a Beautiful Morning.”

Small Betty, Cass, and Detroit Dick were sitting in the lobby. Nora stopped to visit with them a moment before proceeding on to Tillie’s door.

“Was Tillie out here?” she asked.

“No,” Small Betty said, “is she feeling better?”

“I don’t know,” Nora said, “that’s what I’ve come to see.”

“Was she sick?” Betty asked.

“I think just grumpy,” Nora said.

Cass piped in. “Yes, grumpy,” he said. “She took Peggy’s head off for no reason.”

“I’ll go see,” Nora said, beginning now to head toward the door of the talked-about one. Umm, she thought, with a little stab of guilt, she’s probably got cabin-fever. I should’ve maybe asked her to go along on my trekking, but…

Tillie’s door was locked but Taco Belle set up her barking and in a few moments Tillie unlocked the door. She looked frazzled and frumpy as hell, like she’d been on a bender. Her funny white hair stood up all around her head and she wore not a smidgeon of makeup. Only her eyes looked the same, their ferociousness only slightly dimmed. “Come in,” she said, grumpily.

“How are you?” Nora asked by rote.

“I’m fine,” Tillie said.

Nora sat down perpendicularly to her old beat-up lounge chair. If there’d been empty whiskey bottles around or used syringes she wouldn’t have been surprised but of course there was no such thing. “You don’t look so good,” she said. Tillie merely grunted. She had her cordless phones to the TV in her ears, and on the screen was Russell Crowe in the scanty get-up of the Gladiator.

“Am I disturbing you?” Nora asked.

Tillie shook her head. “I’ve seen it three times. So how did you spend your day?”

Nora said that she’d had a good day, did a little grocery shopping, and went to visit a friend on the other side of town. “But you look unhappy. Tell me why.”

And Tillie, after a few moments, began to. It was the same old lament but it lost none of its pathos. “I am just so damned angry!”

“Umm,” Nora said. “You mean, like, at the world? Not just at Matt?” That was her prickly pill of a son who was also a handsome hunk.

“At everything, everything. I wish I had a damn car! I really blew up at Peggy. She and Cass left to go to the bank but then I noticed her car never came back, they were gone for at least a couple of hours, and when they came back I was out there and Peggy said they’d been to Target. I exploded: ‘That makes me so damned mad! Why didn’t you ask me to go?’”

“Umm,” Nora said again, for lack of what else to say.

“It just hurts so much,” Tillie said. “And then yesterday evening I saw Sara and Small Betty all dressed up leaving to go eat at The Gardens.”

“Umm,” Nora murmured, with more sympathy. And followed it up with a soft “Ahh.” She understood and she said so. But she didn’t know what else to say to help Tillie feel better. So she resorted to questions, like a shrink. “What would make you feel better?”

“Not a damned thing,” Tillie said. “Yes, a car. I wish I had my own freaking car.”

Nora nodded. Then she began some little talk about “Living in a community where half the people you wouldn’t really care to cross the street to be with were, etc.” while Tillie fixed her with a dubious gaze.

“Do you want to share a beer?” she asked, and she got up on her gimpy legs to get one. In a little bit, Tillie seemed to feel a bit better but not much.

The real problem—and both of them knew it—was that Tillie had led a profligate life and still would if she could. That is, she had absolutely no sense about cars and money. Gambling was her thing and that was why her son Matt kept her on such a short leash, doling out the dollars to her so stingily. If she had a car the first thing she’d do would be to high-tail it up to the foothills and hit the casinos. She’d pissed away whatever money she’d ever gotten from ex-husbands and sales of real estate, unlike Nora who’d squirreled away a small nest egg and drew upon it sparingly.

At the end of the movie, the Gladiator dies and is reunited with his wife and son.

“Do you think it will be like that?” Tillie asked.

“I most certainly do,” Nora said.

The great chili cook-off

2008-01-21T09:21:00.000-08:00

Guess who won! And she had the good grace to feel guilty over it.

The chili pot-luck was held Friday in the activity room and probably because of the cold weather, more residents attended than usual. Interest had likely been whetted too by the spicy smells emanating from apartments where Ralph, Winnie, Polly, Fred, and a few others were brewing their time-tested recipes in crock-pots and cookers. Nora had not planned to enter the competition but instead bring dessert. She had an Oreo crumb-crust pie shell in her freezer since before Christmas and two packages of cream cheese, one of which, opened, had begun to sprout dark spores (which she could cut off.) So she planned to make a cheese-cake pie.

But at coffee Tuesday, Susan had said more chili entrants were needed. N offered to bring some. It was a good opportunity to get rid of some old stuff in her pantry.

Friday evening, the Zoners began to gather well before the appointed time as they always did, as though they were in danger of starvation or to get their share of something before it was all gone. The different chili entries were lined up on a long table, the electric cords of the various warmers and cookers plugged into a strip on the floor.

Nora was late. She hoped to put her small Corning ware dish down inconspicuously. But Susan was right there and took it from her. The manager placed it at the head of the line, assigning it a letter for anonymous voting.

Sitting at table with Tillie, Small Betty, and Shelta, Nora said, “I brought chili. But it’s all out of cans. Oh, but I made an Oreo cheesecake pie.” This was greeted with “Umms.”

The hungry horde fell upon the offerings of, besides chili, cornbread, macaroni salad, chicken nuggets, carrot/raisin salad, jello salad, rolls, relishes, and desserts of crumb cake, store-bought apple pie, and brownies. N’s Oreo pie disappeared in a twinkle of the eye. People sampled the various chilies in small plastic cups and then helped themselves into larger bowls. Nora’s friends complimented her on her chili because that’s what friends do.

“It’s good,” Betty said, “even if it did come out of cans.” “What about the hamburger?” Tillie asked. Nora said it didn’t have hamburger in it, only a can of Stokes Chili without beans which had to have some meat in it of mysterious origin. What else? A can each of red kidney beans and chili beans and “fire-roasted chopped tomatoes.” And no additional seasoning whatsoever.

“Ralph worked two days on his chili,” Shelta said. “He puts in celery and fresh green chilies.” Tillie said that she could smell Winnie, her neighbor’s, chili, cooking most of the day.

“I started mine an hour ago,” insouciant Nora said.

Voting took place and the winner was announced. Chili A. Nora’s special speedy canned chili. Susan came over with the prize. A $25 gift certificate to Safeway! People clapped. Nora managed a smile. “Don’t dare tell anyone how I made it,” she whispered to her table-mates. Little Shiko came over and hugged her.

Going out into the lobby, Nora was beside Ralph in his wheelchair. He said, “I should’ve put more seasoning in mine. But I thought people here liked things blander.”

Nora patted him on the shoulder. She almost felt like giving him the gift certificate.

Tillie loses weight

2008-01-18T10:00:00.000-08:00

Tillie, who must weigh about 102 lbs., reports she’s lost four pounds and keeps pulling the waistband of her pants away to show people.

“Why on earth do you want to lose weight?” she is asked. Her usual diet is pretty lean, consisting of M&M’s, oreo cookies, milk, Cheerios (bought at Costco in gargantuan boxes), yogurt, and, very rarely, cabbage. Really awful. She doesn’t like most fruits and veggies and has trouble with meat because of her teeth. Crabby Molly accused her of trying to be a seventeen-year-old again rather than a seventy-four year old.

“You’re damned right,” Tillie shot back. Nora rolled her eyes. She thought it was true. Some old ladies just could not accept that they were old. Everyone at the table having coffee—Peggy, Molly, and N—tried to talk some sense into Tillie but of course it was hopeless. At least, Tillie had her teeth in this morning.

The four ladies asked each other what they were doing that day. Peggy, as usual, said she didn’t know, Molly said “the same thing I did yesterday, nothing,” Tillie said the same, and so did N. And they all agreed it was wonderful to do nothing. Each of them had had children, worked jobs, cared for homes and husbands, been a part of the struggling milieu, and now, in the Twilight Zone, was more than content to let the world go on without them. (Except Tillie, maybe.)

But that afternoon it began to snow, so Nora suggested to Sara they play scrabble and Sara agreed it was a fine day to do so.

They talked as they played, gossiping lightly, laughing over things, Nora dredging up bits of poetry and literature, showing off, but Sara appreciating. They played for over two hours, talking all the time they were supposed to be thinking of good words to put on the board.

A bit more came out about their histories. Sara said her husband wrote poetry to her; Nora’s husband gave her two black eyes. But she didn’t tell that to Sara.

Nora said her favorite poem just about was “Jenny Kissed Me” and next was the “Windhover.” From the beautifully simple to the beautifully complex. It was nice to be in Sara’s apartment; she served tea and cookies.

Li-Li talks crazily

2008-01-17T07:52:00.000-08:00

Life goes on in the Twilight Zone. Yesterday evening Sara and Nora tried to play scrabble downstairs, and for some reason Li-Li sat with them. She is the Chinese woman who has dyed blonde hair and dresses so modishly. She had on a white plush two-piece outfit and a billed hat with a stripe around it and a yellow neck scarf. She also wore tinted glasses, aviator shape but small. She is early sixties, with a wonderful figure. But Nora wonders if she’s not a bit “teched.” She talked continuously. Sara said later, “Like she was on speed.”

Sara was kind to her, commenting on the things she said, things that Nora, with her poor hearing despite her “aids,” could not catch all of. Everything Li-Li said came out in a rush and loudly. Nora could hardly think to make her words on the board.

She caught some of this: Li-Li said she had the “one of the highest IQs of any woman in Beijing”! And that she had been a professor of Chinese culture at Stanford in the 1970s. She told in detail about some operation she’d had on her back, and with her hands illustrated the length of her scar, about three feet long. She said they put diapers on her but they kept coming off because she was so small…. And on and on.

Tillie had been with them earlier but Tillie suffers no fools and in a short while got up and stomped out.

Peggy had a meltdown the other night. She drove her car with Cass and Li-Li to get take-out food and because she never drives at night, got horribly confused and agitated and her blood pressure shot up so much that she began to cry. Li-Li related all this at their scrabble game, and Sara and Nora simply looked at one another.

This same evening, a woman named Zora came in with a small battery-operated carpet sweeper and proceeded to demonstrate it for about ten minutes under their feet while they were trying to play, but nothing, not even that annoying “bzzzzz,” caused Li-Li to stop talking.

There’s a new picture in the lobby for people to guess whose it is. It shows a small girl of about five years old atop a pony, wearing a cowboy hat. It’s the very same pose Nora has a picture of of herself , in an old photo book. As she recalls, this was taken during the Depression. Itinerant photographers used to roam about with a pony and take pictures of kiddies astride it for probably fifty cents or a dollar. The one now posted in the lobby is hard to figure out; the little face is small and shadowed by the hat. Something about the eyes suggest… Hmm, she’ll have to take a better look.

Deep thoughts

2008-01-16T08:47:00.000-08:00

Nora is saddened to realize that the people she lives with will sicken and die. Already two have, Hanna and Rose. She is old herself, eighty-two soon, but because she’s in good health, sometimes has trouble realizing the imminent mortality of others.

She thinks how funny all this is, her life in the Twilight Zone. She’s been here almost a year now and it has become her world, the citizens of it her people. She knows some 50 of the 65, their names, backgrounds, their ailments, their likes and dislikes. She cannot really call them friends except for a half-dozen, like Tillie, Sara, Peggy, Jolene, Small Betty, Shiko, and maybe Cass, but she cares for them and not just in the aggregate.

She still sees some of her old friends, but strange to say, although she’s known the country club ladies for most of her adult life, she has never gotten to know them the way she now knows the TZ people. You have to live with someone to know them perhaps, not that they live in the same apartments, but they see each other daily, usually. And being lonely and with endless time on their hands, they share things they wouldn’t ordinarily share.

It was almost like young friends of the heart. These are old friends of the heart. Who are funny, stained, lumpish, and noble sometimes.

Sometimes, as vain and self-obsessed as she is, she has moments of clarity when the people around her, perhaps sitting in that dratted lobby, shine like veins of pure gold.

Inez, who’d been married at sixteen and stayed married for over sixty years, has her late husband’s name beneath the skin of her hand, having punched it in with an ink pen when they first fell in love. (Fortunately, it’s only two letters, “Ed.”) She bore eight children, worked her fingers to the bone in Ed’s business, ballooned in weight to over two hundred pounds on her small frame, then melted down to almost nothing. Who gets up and dances when the music plays. Who dances sometimes with Ralph in his wheelchair by holding onto his hand with him moving his stump in time to the song. Who surely and not so slowly now, is losing her wits.

And Birdie Golden. In a million years of her other life, would Nora have ever known or made the acquaintance of such an odd little woman? Her purple-plum eyes have a hint of madness in them although not of the ulterior variety, but of the sweet, vacant, where are you going, where have you been kind.

Birdie has had two husbands, the “good one” and the “bad one.” She has two children, a son in New Jersey and a daughter in a Texas home for the retarded. No one ever comes to visit her.

Now the project afoot among some of them is to buy Birdie a bed because the old sleep couch she used is stuck in the “in” position and it’s too short for her to lie comfortably on. For the last month Birdie has been sleeping in a recliner chair. Nora got Birdie to invite her in on the pretext of looking at her art work. She has a studio apartment, only one room that at one end is crammed with cartons of Birdie’s china and crystal.

(Besides wanting to see what kind of a bed would go in there, Nora would love to peek in Birdie’s closet to see how many striped, crocheted shirts there are. But of course she couldn’t do that.)

There was no way around it but to come out with it because Birdie is both stubborn and proud.

“Wouldn’t you like a bed?”

“Well, sure.”

“How about a day-bed? Or a futon?”

Birdie’s other furniture is more antique-type. She says, in her Bronx accent, “But I have to have beauty.”

Nora cannot reproduce the sound of that word “beauty” when relating their conversation later to her fellow conspirators. She said, “She has to like whatever we get or she won’t use it.”

She again wonders how her old friends, if they were immersed in this environment, might respond. She cannot in her wildest dreams picture her former associates in the situations in which she now finds herself. Having the conversations she has, participating in the activities she does. Having Tillie talk to her in that fierce, wild-eyed way with her two front teeth missing.

Her former friends were always very careful with their emotions, what they said, and their actions, too. She feels that for most of her adult life she has battered herself against the walls they had around them, ever hiding how she truly felt.

Leaving the Zone

2008-01-15T08:22:00.000-08:00

Yesterday afternoon, about four, a man named Andrew was in the downstairs being embraced by Shiko, the tiny, ultra-compassionate Japanese lady. She put her head against his chest as she does. Seeing Nora, Andrew started for her but she wasn’t sure she was his target until he spoke to her, but unfortunately, with her poor hearing and his burrish cockney accent, she failed to understand what he was saying.

She went closer to him and could smell liquor on his breath. She could see he was greatly agitated in a weary, pale way. He repeated his words and she caught “Rose” and “hospital.” She knew Andrew shared a two-bedroom apartment with a woman named Rose. He was younger, she was hugely fat, used an electric scooter, and had numerous health problems, so obviously he was her aide-de-companion. Nora also recalled someone mentioning Rose had gone to the hospital the day before. Nora enlisted Shiko to translate even though her accent renders her words almost unintelligible, at least to Nora.

He was asking Nora to take him to the hospital. She asked him if his own car was not working. He said “I can’t drive.” She thought, oh, because you’re halfway sloshed.

“Yes, I will, let me go get my coat and my keys,” she said.

There were grave faces around for more people than usual were in the lobby because the heat was off in many apartments, and the lobby, for some mysterious reason, was warmer. Or, maybe if people gather together they feel warmer.

So Nora took Andrew the several miles to St. Anthony’s Central on the creaky ice-covered streets. She asked him how Rose was.

He said “She won’t last the night.”

She said “Oh, I am so sorry.”

He went on talking to her, she straining to hear and exuding sympathy, also wondering a bit about this “odd couple” relationship. They’d been together for eight years, he said. Obviously, he was stricken with sorrow over her. She let him off at the back door of St. Anthony’s and said “I will pray for Rose.”

He mumbled “Thanks, please do.”

“How will you get home?” she asked.

“Her brother is here. He’ll bring me.”

When Nora returned to the Twilight Zone, more people had gathered and the black woman, Effie, was leading some of them, hands linked, in prayer for Rose. Nora sat awhile with Small Betty on the couch; she was one who had no heat and was hot under the collar about it. Nora’s apartment had radiant light from the sun on both the south and west exposures so was fairly comfortable.

Susan, the manager, arrived and explained that she’d called a heating company but with the bitter cold and people not getting their furnaces ready for winter all over the city, they might come at ten or midnight or two in the morning, and for everyone to “be brave and get out your extra blankets.”

Nora thought they’d have warmed up more to her speech if she’d said “$25 will be knocked off your rent next month to make up for this breech of good maintenance.”

Peggy, in the meantime, had locked herself out of her apartment and asked Susan to let her in. She did and said it would be $25. Peggy said, “But you are over here anyway.” The manager said, “But ordinarily I wouldn’t be so we have to treat it on an emergency basis.” Peggy was too confused to argue with her.

Today was a sad reminder to residents that those they have come to know and care for will, one by one, slip out the portals of the Twilight Zone into that “dark night” the poet cried to his father not to enter. To no avail.

Another mystery, eating big

2008-01-14T08:39:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, it was reported to Nora by Tillie that someone had messed up the jigsaw puzzle of a thousand pieces that was almost completed on the table in the activity room. “Ray has struck again!” she said.

“No way!” Nora said but Tillie insisted “way.”

How did she know? Because Crabby Molly told her, and Tillie repeated what she said: “Who else could it be? Oh, he’s got keys made to everything. If I ever catch that scalawag sneaking around in here causing mischief…!”

Nora could well imagine the irascible Molly saying this, at the same time bobbing her head so that her nose piece to her traveling oxygen tube would be in danger of falling out. Nora vicariously felt the pain of the spoiled puzzle because Shiko had worked on it along with Martha and Ralph for almost a week.

Ray, of course, was the disgraced, deposed, dyed-black-hair old gent who’d been made to leave the Twilight Zone because of misbehavior. He’d vowed “to come back.” Now, when anything weird or untoward happened, Ray—or his ghost—was blamed. It was half-way a joke. Or did some oldsters actually believe…?

When Nora left Tillie’s to go back upstairs, she debated stopping on two to tell Jolene this latest bit of news. If anyone could ferret out the truth of the messed-up puzzle, it was Jolene. But she decided not to give the gossip legs.

However, after her nap, she had a message from Jolene:

“Listen, I wanted to tell you before you heard it the wrong way. Evan’s little granddaughter messed up the puzzle. His son was visiting and the child was let run around unsupervised. Just wanted to give you that head’s up.”

Nora could hardly wait to call Tillie and disabuse her of her misinformation.

But Tillie had lost interest. “Whatever.”

~~~

Nora drove the ladies out north on the turnpike to Gunther Toody’s diner for the nickel hamburger night—buy one, get the second for a nickel, but the proviso was that you also had to buy a drink and the drinks were $4. So they ended up spending about $9 apiece. The meal was gargantuan.

The three ladies in their shiny red vinyl booth said to one another, “No wonder people in America are so fat.” Tillie, facing the door, said, “Every woman that comes in here is huge.”

“Yes, who could eat all this?” Nora said as she shot catsup over her fries and cut her bacon/cheeseburger in half. Peggy had ordered hers on sour dough bread and ate only part of it. Tillie ate about a third of hers. Nora managed to eat three-quarters of her burger and took the last quarter home in a foam box.

Tillie, as she does, grilled Peggy about her relationship with Cass. Usually, Peggy would not go with them to dinner or any place else because of waiting to see what Cass was going to do.

Peggy, as she does, took a few moments to answer. Then she said, “Cass and I are just friends.”

“He’s backing off, isn’t he?” Tillie said.

Nora wanted to kick both of them under the table, for she saw Peggy’s chin begin to quiver. Besides, people were waiting for tables. Fortunately, the waitress came with their check, and she nudged Tillie with her elbow and the topic was not taken up again. But, “just friends,” she thought to herself. Hmm.

But let a splinter swerve

2008-01-11T08:38:00.000-08:00

Sara taped a TV segment with Barack Obama and invited Effie to watch it, thinking the black lady would enjoy seeing the Senator shine. But Sara told Nora that after a moment or two of paying attention to the show, Effie began talking about her upcoming trip to New Orleans with husband Dick.

“Maybe she’s just not interested in politics,” Nora said. She thought of a poem by one of her favorites, Emily Dickinson. It was something about “the brain within its groove runs evenly and true, but let a splinter swerve…” The gist of it was that once the brain gets out of whack even slightly—and she could imagine the aged black woman’s kind of swerving around, not quite able or willing to discipline itself enough to attend to the black presidential candidate’s remarks. Her brain preferred to dwell upon what it purely liked to dwell upon, her life with Dick, her next meal perhaps, her lovely nap that afternoon, or her coming jaunt to somewhere else. Of course, purely speculation on N’s part.

A lot of the TZ’rs seemed to be like that. They’d come through a lot in their lives and now they only wanted to coast and think about what was simple and pleasant to them.

Of course, now, there was some talk about politics. But most of it seemed unenlightened. The old-line GOP’rs would vote the party ticket no matter who the candidates were. Many, like Sara, strongly favored Obama. Of whose company Crabby Molly was definitely not one. Tillie told Nora what Molly said: “You’d never catch me voting for…” Molly is a classic Southern redneck.

Nora favors Hillary but doesn’t parade that before Sara after Sara took off on Bill. “He lies,” she said. Nora didn’t say they all probably did.

She had a thought during the night (a “new idée” as Tillie would say) about a short story she might write for The New Yorker. About “Sleeping and Eating in America” but in the future, say 2075. Because insomnia and obesity proved resistant to cure by even the most advanced technological and psychological treatments, these two conditions were now accepted as cultural “givens.”

People were divided accordingly (remember, this is all in the future) and life literally changed in the way it was lived toward the end of the 21st. century.

For example, there were those who slept from, say, 8 p.m. to 3:30 a.m. Then they got up and proceeded with their daily routine, and businesses and schools, etc., were open to accommodate their schedule.

Then there were the people who went to bed about 4 a.m. and slept until eleven or twelve. Their daily routine was geared to this time, with places staying open late. (She hasn’t worked out all the logistics.)

And the corpulent folks were relieved from the stress of even thinking about dieting since that had been proven long ago not to work. The leaner people? Well, they had their own world too. But of course, the different worlds were congruent…

The brain within its groove
Runs evenly and true;
But let a splinter swerve,
‘Twere easier for you
To put the water back
When floods have slit the hills,
And scooped a turnpike for themselves,
And blotted out the mills!

--E. Dickinson

Could be Nora’s brain is jumping the groove.

Father Seraphim

2008-01-10T07:46:00.000-08:00

One nice thing this morning was that Father Seraphim from nearby St. Rita’s church came to say Mass and he gave a wonderful sermon, perfectly suited to the Zoners. However, unfortunately, while he was speaking, the fire alarm went off and one of the blaring loudspeakers was right over where he stood. He stopped talking and everyone looked at one another wondering if they should start evacuating but nobody moved. Father then began speaking again despite the alarm still going off deafeningly. Through the glass door to the side could be seen Birdie in the hall running up and down aimlessly. Nora whispered to Sara, “She’s like a chicken with her head off.”

Nora told Tillie about the sermon later and Tillie listened which she doesn’t always do, then said, “I’d like a copy of that.” Tillie is unchurched but she’s been thinking about her own demise, apparently.

Father’s subject was Death. But in a comforting way. He quoted Christ’s words: “He who believes in Me will never die.” Father said, “What does this mean? Because we have all had people die, our friends, relatives, and so on. They do die. So why does Christ say “’…they will never die?’”

Well, of course it is because of eternal life in Heaven which is the real life, this present life on earth being only a prelude to when they will be “face-to-face” with God in Heaven.

Since so many of the Zoners have their noses pressed against the glass, they listened raptly to Father. Some of them probably thought of Rose, a woman on the second floor whom no one has seen for days, maybe weeks. Crabby Molly and Tillie went to the office about her.

But Susan said, “Well, you know this is independent living so we really can’t go into people’s apartments just to see if they’re still alive…” (Tillie whispered, “They wait until there’s a smell in the hall.”)

Maybe someone should tell Father Seraphim, he might visit Rose. The reality of life in the Twilight Zone. Every now and then someone is going to slip into that dark night.

Book club on the other side of town

2008-01-09T05:56:00.000-08:00

“She really does bug the liver out of me,” Nora said in her quaint way. “But I’ll try to behave.”

“Well.”

Just that one word that spoke volumes. Joann was too much of a lady to get too involved in this. But she did add, “She does annoy me when she reads.”

“Yes,” Nora sighed, somewhat over-exasperatedly. “Like we hadn’t all read the danged book ourselves.” She was quiet and thoughtful for a moment as if remembering past indignities heaped upon her head by the one they were talking about, ”M.A.,” as they called her, Mary Alice, a member of the First Monday Book Club, a group of eight women that met now on the second Tuesday but kept its original name out of a kind of silly humor, the kind M.A. favored.

“And then,” Nora went on, despite a warning voice within her telling her not to, “she’ll likely interrupt herself and say to me, with that sweet little smile of hers, “Oh, can you hear me, Nora?”

Joann laughed. Then, “Well,” she said again. It was her way of wanting to end the phone conversation, perhaps; or she sounded like a character in a soap opera just told something shockingly revelatory, “And so, she’s having the baby even though the doctor warned her.” Well.

“At least I’ll enjoy the cookies,” Nora said, one last weak jibe.

“Ha, ha,” Joann went, dutifully.

Driving to the book club meeting the next day, Nora remonstrated with herself. She had not been with her old friends since November, because they skipped meeting in December. The main thing she told herself was to control her tongue. She decided that most sins were committed through the tongue. Which made her think of French kissing which led her to ponder, as she increasingly did now that she was so much older—a fact undeniably affirmed by stealing a glance at herself in the rear view mirror—

Now she’d lost the thread of whatever she was thinking about… Oh, yes, controlling her tongue, how that had branched off into a sexy thought.

Wouldn’t the ladies be shocked if they knew she had such thoughts? But maybe they did, too, although she doubted that some of them did. The reason she did was because, to be blunt about it, she’d never had enough sex in her life. That was the truth. Her dearly departed husband, the only lover she was legally and morally entitled to, had been a dud in the sack, despite their creating four children.

“I got pregnant every time we had sex,” went her imaginary conversation with herself. But that hadn’t been what her original thought was about tongues. It was: control yours. That is the order of the day, she thought, going up the walkway to Joann’s large, imposing house.

The ladies greeted each other sweetly, briefly, and then gathered around their hostess’ good-sized polished mahogany table with the harp-back chairs. There were seven of them today. Nora sat on the side with a woman she liked, a retired lawyer, Carol. Joann at the head, Dru at the other head, and arrayed opposite Nora and Carol were Marie whose violet blouse made her eyes look like woodbines, Stella the Intense, and M.A. They all had their new paperback copies of the novel to be discussed, or, like Nora, had procured it from the library. Some had notes also, containing reams of information about the reading which no one would really peruse, but some of them were born statisticians, M.A. being one of the most prominent, another thing that Nora let her goat get gotten by.

The details of the meeting need not be gone into. Nora, although attending to the discussion, paid more attention to interior landscapes she attempted to glimpse behind the familiar, age-spotted faces before her. Especially M.A.’s. To see in her something special and wonderful, as she might have been as a child before her personality got so…

“Can you hear well enough, Nora?”

The question came from the object of her attention. All sorts of rude rejoinders rushed to the tip of Nora’s tongue. M.A. was perhaps two or three years younger than she, but why did she think her hearing or that of anyone else’s at the table was better than Nora’s?

“Can you?” Nora riposted.

M.A. smiled sweetly. In fact, her face was wreathed with permanent laugh lines because she never spoke, it seemed, without prefacing her words with a girlish “ha, ha,” self-deprecating and signifying what? A childhood spent in bondage to cruel parents, or a fifty-year marriage to an overbearing brute of a husband?

Well, this was not a good start to her afternoon planned to be charitable and magnanimous. It was a good thing that a person’s thoughts did not appear with a dancing cursor across their brow.

M.A. said something, and there was a rustling of pages around Nora. It was true; her hearing was several decimals below the others. M.A. had pointed out a page in the book for their attention, and now, to Nora’s horror, she began to read a passage. Nora felt indignation like a scalding. M.A.’s voice was incredibly irritating because it was high, sweet, melodic, shaped in its every rounded note and inflection, to please. One human being should not speak like that to another human being.

Nora’s thoughts again went back to M.A.’s childhood (of which she knew nothing). She must’ve been whipped with thongs to develop such a conciliatory manner. Or, again, her tyrannical husband (who appeared, on the surface, to be a typical, dull, retired attorney).

M.A. had another irritating mannerism. As she spoke, she cast her eyes from side to side, along with her quick little smiles, at all the faces in turn. Like she was trying to enlist them. “Hear me!” “Like me!” “Aren’t I something?”

Nora shuddered as if to shake off a spell. Then someone blessedly interrupted. M.A.’s face still moved a little, like the tremors of a beheaded chicken, her eyes still with that unholy gleam in them that sought to capture one’s very soul. But I resist, I resist!

They came to an end of their discussion. They began to talk about the next books they would read. Several had suggestions, including Nora. M.A. smiled at her as she spoke. “Oh—“ Nora said, “and I’d like to suggest a few ‘procedural points’ if I may.”

“One is that we don’t read passages from the book to illustrate something, since we’ve all read it. It just slows things down.” Nora was careful not to give an apologetic little smile.

Across the table, M.A. fixed her with her eyes, those deep-hooded, smiley-ringed eyes.

“And no pictures of grandchildren,” Joann said, giving them all a laugh.

“Aww—“

Nora and Joann were in the habit of post-morteming book club meetings by email, Joann writing very late at night because that was her wont, and Nora replying very early in the morning, because that was hers.

“I think it went well. I’m glad you said what you did about the reading,” Joann wrote.

Nora responded: “I hope I didn’t come off sounding like a ‘heavy.’ I have got to ease up on M.A. But she does bug the very liver out of me.”

Touching

2008-01-08T08:16:00.000-08:00

People touch each other at the slightest chance. Yes, the warmth of a human hand seems to be very important in the Twilight Zone. Sara, as has been said, is a toucher, Peggy grabs people’s arms and pulls them toward her, Tillie takes Nora’s hand sometimes when she talks to her, up close and personal. And Nora has introduced the “chin chuck” and it’s beginning to catch on. She chin-chucks her friends occasionally when they meet and a few other people but not the fellows as yet. She wonders what Cass would do, or rather Peggy who is always in range, if she chin-chucked him?

Speaking of which, there is a rumor that Fred touched Agnes “inappropriately” when he helped get her onto the RTD bus to go shopping recently. Well, no wonder, having to hoist her big tokus up and in. A rumor like this takes on legs so it best be scotched immediately. Agnes is eighty-nine. Maybe she started it.

Yesterday, Nora found a strange thing before her door—a big plant in a pot, almost as tall as she was, wisteria she thought or lilac, rather dusty, not real of course, and she thought it must be a joke. She asked several people if they’d left it but all said they had not. So she took it down and put it on the giveaway bench, hoping the person who’d left it wouldn’t see and have her/his feelings hurt. A small group was in the room including Shiko who was a likely suspect because of her inscrutable Oriental sense of humor. But Shiko did not bat an eye. So it remains a mystery, along with the lip-stick stained door, the knocking on Dolly’s door at two-thirty in the morning, the dog poop in front of the mailboxes and the “pile” by the second floor elevator (which turned out to be a large dried leaf).

Today, being Tuesday, is Senior Day at the ARC thrift store and doubtless some of the ladies will go see what they can find to resell at the rummage sale to be held this Spring. Nora should’ve saved the mystery plant for that. She is slated to make some baked goods, definitely a carrot cake for Effie’s table and some coffee cake or chocolate cake for Tillie’s table upon which she will have some of her treasures from the bottomless trunk.

And that is about all the excitement going on today. Nora has book club tomorrow on the “other side of town” with her old friends and she will try and report on that.

What dreams are these?

2008-01-07T09:30:00.000-08:00

Tillie didn’t sleep too well last night and came up to tell Nora about it. She said she had a dream about going to the bathroom, of all things. She had to go badly but was too nervous. Her sphincter muscles were too tight, and she couldn’t go. Besides, she couldn’t find a place or privacy from other people. There was also something about a lack of toilet paper.

Do I need to know all this? Nora thought. What am I, her bathroom shrink? Pure anxiety, she told Tillie. About what? The stress and deja-vu-ness of Christmas and Tillie’s overdue credit card balances she’ll have to use her last remaining money to pay off? Well, duh. Elementary, my dear. Or alimentary.

Nora reminded her friend she’s getting Section 8 soon and that will be a big financial help. But Tillie said she was worried about that, too, that people would see her as a welfare case. Nora threw up her hands at her. “They’ll be jealous.”

Speaking of yucky things, at coffee the other morning Effie told about pulling out her nose hairs. She was sitting with Nora, Tillie, and Shelta. Effie said she does this regularly as part of her grooming. Nora went “ouch,” Tillie cringed like she’d taken a bite of something awful, and Shelta made a face.

Something nice: the mailman is much more than a mailman. Saturday Nora was downstairs with her daughter Anne who had a camera and wanted pictures taken of herself in her Indian sari outfit (which has those voluminous trousers that bunch in the front, looking really weird but N said nothing.) The mailman obliged, literally took the camera from their hands to take their pics. He is such a nice fellow.

Nora’s daughter told her what Tillie’s bathroom dream meant. That Tillie is emotionally bound-up, cannot or will not express herself. Little does Anne know how well Tillie expresses herself. It was probably just all those oreo cookies she eats before bedtime.

Sara and Barack O

2008-01-04T08:56:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, no one except Crabby Molly went out because a chill wind blew all day long. Molly always goes out. But for the others—Sara, Nora, and Small Betty—it was a perfect Scrabble day. They met after lunch at Sara’s lovely apartment; lovely because of the “appointments” she has about. Things like sugar cubes decorated with tiny green and violet flowers that she served with Jasmine tea and cookies. They played for almost three hours.

Jolene came in and visited with them. She’s the one who sees the cup “half-empty” whereas Nora and Sara see it as “half-full.”

Sara has got to be the kindest person alive. One can scarcely walk along with her for her stopping to assist fallen people up again and give a cup of water to someone dying of thirst even though it’s symbolical and their needs are hidden.

Old Black Joe, as he is called, was sitting in the lobby earlier, and Sara went up to him to inquire how he was. And it’s not just a cursory thing; she stays with them beyond the conceivable moment, “laying hands upon them.” Yes, that’s what she does, frequently reaches out and touches people. Nora thinks Sara has a healing touch. Sara apologized for this habit, asking “Do you mind?” and Nora said, no, she loved to be touched. Does that sound strange? She doesn’t think so.

Sara ever sees the need wherever she goes; in fact, Nora thinks she almost needs a keeper because she is literally ”called,” it seems, to minister to everyone. From the low to the high.

Speaking of the high, she told them about being with a person who is practically number one in the news right now: Barack Obama. He was in town this summer and by some stroke of luck Sara was able to be there. He was signing his book and she was before him and he apparently sighed or gave some sign of exhaustion for she said to him her classic thing: “Are you all right?” And she says it with such a soft look in her eyes.

One knows—the lucky recipient of her attention—that this is no sham, no simply pretty thing but a real concern.

Obama replied, “I’m tired.” And Sara said, with that lovely girlish humor she has, “Can I do anything?”

And he, the would-be presidential candidate, said “I need a back rub.”

She laughed and probably would’ve obliged if prudence, a quality Sara also possesses, hadn’t stepped in. Of course, there were Secret Service men ready to step in also if she’d laid a hand on Barack’s aching back.

Gallons of fluid

2008-01-03T10:44:00.000-08:00

Tillie said that the aged lady, Trixie, who returned from the hospital New Year’s Day after a bout with pneumonia, had had 13 gallons of fluid taken from her. Nora was incredulous. “Why, that would fill a barrel.”

“Well, did you ever look at her legs?” Tillie said. “They were huge, all swollen.”

Sometime later Nora met Trixie in the hall, using a walker and wearing a bathrobe. She had also just met her husband, Gary, using a walker and wearing a bathrobe, coming from the other direction. She maybe shouldn’t ask such questions, but she did: “Someone said you had 13 gallons of fluid taken off.” (She should’ve prefaced her remarks with “Glad you’re back.”)

Trixie laughed. “Almost three gallons,” she said.

“Uh huh,” Nora said. She could hardly wait to report that to Miss Know-It-All.

~~~~
Cass told Nora that someone’s rent was raised $100 a month.

“Wow!” she said, “that’s a lot for a senior citizen. I wonder how come.”

It was a tiny white-haired woman named Nancy who wore thick glasses and used a walker.

Well, of course the rumor grew because Nora told Sara, and Jolene already knew, and Wilma told others and one thing led t’uther…

But the rumor was scotched when Sara went into the office and asked Susan: “Is it true that someone’s rent was raised $100? Because if it is, I may have to be looking for another place to live.”

Susan snorted (some of this will be made up or imagined for dramatic purposes) and denied it roundly. “Not even half that,” she said.

And of course Sara is an unimpeachable source. So she relayed the info to Nora who put it on the tribal drums. But first saying, “Not even half. You mean, like, $49.95.”

Sara chortled, “Yeah.”

“But still that’s a mighty big raise,” Nora said.

“Yes, but…” Sara expostulated in her reasonable way. “Perhaps Nancy’s apartment had been real low to begin with or something…”

“Peut-etre,” Nora replied. That had become just about her favorite word for goings-on in the Twilight Zone.

On the docket today: bus to the grocery, Communion Service, and Game Night at seven.

On the giveaway bench: cookie jar (empty), copy of Rush Limbaugh’s book, “The Way Things Ought To Be,” denture cup.

Crabby Molly's husband beat her

2008-01-02T14:57:00.000-08:00

Tillie told Nora that Molly, whose tongue can wither like a ray gun, was beaten by her husband.

“What?” Nora cried, sitting in the dimness of Tillie’s apartment, absent-mindedly petting Taco Belle.

“Yes, yes,” Tillie insisted, “he beat the hell out of her.” Nora could only shake her head. One just never knows, does one. Tillie went on. “One day she took her three small children and just left.” Nora shook her head some more. “But they ended up having a happy life,” Tillie said.

“It must’ve been awfully hard for her,” Nora said. Molly was not the type to ever have had more than two dimes to rub together.

“They took trips in their later years, all over,” Tillie said, in her typical elliptical fashion.

“You mean when the kids were grown?”

“Yes, up and out.”

“She traveled with her grown children?”

“No, with her husband.” Tillie gave her a look of exasperation.

“I thought she left her husband. You mean she had another one?”

Another look of supreme impatience. “They went back together.”

Nora did one of her body English things: she sat back upright and let her jaw slightly drop.

“Yes,” Tillie said.

“She forgave him? How could she?”

“Well, you didn’t do anything when your husband hit you.”

No, Nora hadn’t. She was always surprised Tillie remembered things so well. Sometimes not a good quality in people.

Moving on… Tillie was approved recently for Section Eight. Now she won’t have to be so dependent on that pill of a son of hers. Her rent will go down to about half of what she’s paying now.

Whoopee.

January 1, 2008

2008-01-01T09:46:00.000-08:00

Five o’clock in the morning. Hot black coffee. Cold room. A single light on. Mixed thoughts upon awakening; some sadness. Why?

Nora had New Year’s Eve dinner last night with Jolene in her apartment. Sara, Small Betty, Cass, and Evan were also there. It was a feast. Champagne-vodka punch and hors d’oeuvres of tiny crab cakes with tartar sauce. Dinner was beef tournedos, asparagus soufflé, salad, and chocolate ripple cheesecake. About a thousand calories per serving.

It was nice to have men around for a change. Both wore a dress shirt and tie, Evan a white one with a blue tie and Cass a blue striped shirt with a white collar and red tie. He did not wear his baseball cap but let his bald head shine, not that it did. He had a fringe of hair. Jolene wore a long red tapestry skirt, Betty a shift, Sara a long black skirt and lacy white blouse, and Nora, her brown and turquoise silk skirt with a flounce and slinky top.

Jolene made all the food except for what they brought and still was able to keep a tight rein on what was going on in the living room. She was like the marionette master with the strings in her hand. But for once, she didn’t dish the dirt on people

Nora sat beside Cass on the couch. He wasn’t a talker but a listener, which, unfortunately, she was too. She recalled how Peggy giggled and laughed up in his face, touching his arm to engage him. “When will Peggy be back?” she asked him. Cass shrugged. Maybe tomorrow. It seemed like the ghost of Peggy sat between them, making it a bit crowded.

But with Jolene at the head of the dinner table, no one else needed to struggle to converse. She said, “Let’s make resolutions. With a twist. Make them for other people. What you wish that other person would do in the New Year.”

“That could get sticky,” Sara said. Betty agreed. “Yeah.”

“Okay, Sara, mine for you is…” Jolene’s eyes danced wickedly, “…don’t be so nice. I’m kidding. We can keep it clean.”

“Nora, choose someone in the room and make a New Year’s resolution for them,” Jolene ordered.

Nora looked around at all their faces. Her immediate thought was: Sure, b.

I wish you had a different type of personality, one that was more modest, demure, quiet and gentle. But instead you’re in my face, compulsively talking on and on. And it ain’t pretty what you say. But you are a great cook.

She turned to Cass. Give Peggy the heave-ho.

“Um, um, um,” Nora said, her mantra when she was at a loss for words. “Cass, don’t eat so much candy.” He was diabetic, gave himself shots, but ate candy almost every day sitting in the lobby reading the newspaper. He smiled and nodded.

The game, of course, was pointless. They were the way they were and no resolution was going to change that.

New Year’s Eve kisses? They never happened because it would’ve been silly to kiss someone two hours before midnight, the time they broke up, all having yawned roundly an hour beforehand.

Twilight Zone Still List

2007-12-31T15:35:00.000-08:00

Nora got the idea from somewhere to ask the Zoners what they would still like to be doing in 2008. Here is what some of them said:

Still breathing: Crabby Molly, adjusting her oxygen line to put her cigarette in.

Still grateful: for each morning I wake up. Ralph

Still passionate: about men. Peggy

Still wondering: what Nora’s name is. Inez

Still working: the New York Times crossword puzzle from last Wednesday. Sara

Still helping others: Shiko

Still facing: each day. Cleo

Still enjoying: women. Fred

Still bitchin’: Jolene

Still pleased: Over the Onindaga Indians. Cass

Still hoping: Bruno makes it through the night. Jewel

Still wanting: a man. Peggy

Still amazed: I’m still here. 92-year-old Zora

Still proud: of all I do here. Effie.

Still worrying: about other people. Sara

Still trying: to beat Sara at Scrabble. Nora

Still glad: I had a good one this morning. Crabby Molly

Still not: doing much housework. Rose and Andrew

Still thinking I'm a teenager: Tillie

Still eating: Shelta

Still dancing: Whenever the music plays. Birdie and Inez

Words of wisdom

2007-12-28T08:23:00.000-08:00

At year’s end, it seems appropriate to impart some gems of elderly wisdom. Here are some profound statements that were either made by Twilight Zoners or could’ve been:

Ralph: most of our troubles would be solved if everyone had a toilet plunger.

Nora: when you wear overalls, watch you don’t drop the straps in the toilet.

Tillie: why do they keep letting in all these old people?

Peggy: I wondered if you were awake. Well, I won’t stay long because I’m getting sleepy.
Oh, Tony always did that for me.

Cass: where’s that thing you got from Victoria’s Secret?

Evan: the Indians of the Great Lakes area were…

Crabby Molly: she had better not mess with me. No, I’m not going out on my patio in this weather to smoke.

The Manager: please smile when people come in to look it over.

Sara: the gentleman who picks up the trash…

Shiko: my name is not “Little One.”
.
Effie: I do a lot around here, too.

Fred: you look very nice tonight. (Eyes not on face.)

Jolene: Everyone is losing it but me.

Wilma: she had better not mess with me. I know Judo.

Inez: what did you say your name was?

Detroit Dick: did I ever tell you I worked….years for the givvernmint?

~~~~

It snowed most of the day yesterday but the sun is out this morning. Nora doesn’t know whether Sara got back from her trip, with so many flights cancelled. She has a belated present for her that she got from Greta’s house. It’s a book that Sara won’t be able to put down. “The Way Things Ought To Be.” The author: Rush Limbaugh. Nora had given it years ago to her daughter, who feels the same as Sara.

Christmas

2007-12-26T17:17:00.001-08:00

It began snowing Christmas sometime in the night and by the time Nora looked out the window at five, three or four inches covered everything. The falling snow looked lovely in the street lights but what about their plans!

She was to go to youngest daughter Janey’s for brunch, in the afternoon to oldest daughter Anne’s, and in the evening to middle daughter Greta’s and husband Chris’ for dinner with Greta’s former husband, his brother, Chris’ two big boys by a former love, his small daughter, Greta’s own son, Nora’s above-named other daughters and their children. But the driving would be trickier than the relationships.

The snow never stopped falling. Nonetheless, the engagements were kept, a bit later than planned. Santa brought five-year-old Emma so many toys! Pink skis and white hard-shell ski boots almost taller than the skis. Her daddy, who does not live with them, will take her skiing. Plus, Emma told her grandmother Nora breathlessly, “Daddy got me a baby grand piano!” Which was at Daddy’s house. Nora questioned Janey with her eyes. Janey shrugged. A grown-up baby grand? Or child’s size? Nora did not ask the little one who was already exhibiting signs of Christmas burn-out.

N skipped the afternoon gathering but did go at night to Greta’s. Chris, who always does the cooking, fixed roast turkey and marinated tri-tips which he grilled outdoors on an unroofed patio (snow still falling). Nora usually brought pies but simply didn’t this year. Besides, Chris always buys desserts at Whole Foods anyway. He bought chocolate-pecan pie, chocolate mousse pie, and mixed berry pie. The long tables, pushed together, were groaning. As shortly were the guests.

Nora’s daughters are crafty. Greta gave her mother a necklace she made of green and blue stones, Anne crocheted her a hat of black wool with pink band and edge and on the crown, hair-like, soft-as-silk, black yarn woven in. Very stylish! Nora loves it. Janey gave her a folk-art plaque of the kind she sells at several galleries around town.

Nora, feeling the pinch of finances, mostly gave things from the Store (she does have an eye and only buys name brands). The recipients said they were “great” but the test is if they get worn.

So Christmas is over for another year and Nora can’t help but feel a sigh of relief.

Her grandmother used to put a note in with the packed-away tree ornaments that said something like: “If I am not here with you this year, don’t shed a tear, just think of me.”

Merry Christmas

2007-12-25T08:43:00.000-08:00

Nora was disorganized this year and didn’t finish all her Christmas preparations. She always thinks she has more time, that the 25th of December is not actually next week. Tomorrow. Now. She has not spent much money because her rent in the Zone went up (along with everyone else’s), so she’s done most of her shopping at the Store and only gotten presents for her three daughters and one small granddaughter she’s especially close to. She made candy, caramel corn, and granola for the rest of her grand- and great-grand children, the latter of which she has three. Seven of the grand. She’ll be glad to give it all away because she’s been nibbling at it.

Sara is away to spend Christmas with one of her children. Before she left she gave Nora a card with this inscription: “Hope you know how much I value your friendship. Here’s to more Scrabble games in 2008.” She also gave Nora a large bag of homemade granola which was the inspiration for N’s making some. Tillie gave Nora earrings, Peggy, lotion, and Nora gifted them with pretty trinkets from the Store.

It’s pretty quiet in the Zone. The office is closed until a day or so after Christmas. So if they have any emergencies they’ll have to deal with them themselves. A sad, unexpected note: Lucy, who’s only been mentioned a time or two (a marathon conversation with Ralph and speculation as to what was in the wrapped packages in her cart she never let out of her sight), has died. There’s a notice in the lobby. She was seen just about a week ago wearing, as usual, her long, pale cashmere coat that she bought in San Francisco over 50 years ago. She was a smoker so maybe that did her in. Nora doesn’t know any details.

Also, the woman whose apartment was cleaned awhile back, Hanna, has also passed away. Shiko was devastated despite the inevitable. She wept beside Nora in the lobby and Nora patted her sturdy little back like she was a sad child. Then Shiko, as she does, slithered away.

But not to be sad! A joyous time is upon the Twilight Zone, its occupants, its dwelling places, its hallways and byways, its newest ghosts, Lucy and Hanna, and the evanescent, black-haired Ray. He, it is rumored, “visits” on New Year’s Eve. That is the anniversary of when he was kicked out of the Zone, allegedly vowing “to return.” Perhaps the newspaper delivery man who comes at 3:30 a.m. will catch a glimpse of him.

A soft, new blanket of snow covers everything, like white eiderdown. Under the street lights at five a.m., it glistens like flecks of mica. Hope it stops so people can get out later. Nora is slated to go to one daughter’s for brunch, another’s in the afternoon, and then everyone together at night. She doesn’t want to eat granola, caramel corn, and fudge for her dinner.

Potluck brunch

2007-12-21T07:43:00.000-08:00

Today is the potluck brunch. The management is providing ham and mini-quiches. So what does that leave the residents of the Twilight Zone to bring? Peggy is doing a new fruit salad (hope it won’t be like the last), Tillie “some more of my biscuits,” to which Nora said, “We can throw them at each other.” (Tillie makes the worst biscuits), N is making muffins because she has three suppurating bananas, and also bringing the rest of her cookies she made that are way too rich. Well, pot lucks are the mother of invention…and the garbage disposal for the unwanted.

There’s a new picture up in the lobby for people to guess whose it is. It’s a picture of a toddler, perhaps two or three years old, sitting in a wheelbarrow, wearing a light-colored shapeless garment. It’s not a good, clear picture but there is enough there for Nora to guess it is of Wilma because she looks peevish, even as a baby. The child has a definitely disapproving view of its world.

Nora’s daughter Greta came over yesterday to look at her old photograph books because they’re doing the same thing at Greta’s school, the teachers putting up pics of themselves when young. She and Nora went through the old albums with a laugh and a sigh for what was o’re. Greta laughed but Nora sighed and said they made her sad, kind of.

“Why?” Greta asked. “Because of your life, that’s it’s almost over or that you ‘wasted’ it?”

“Not that, exactly,” Nora said. “I think because I made so many mistakes.” And to herself said, “and I’m still making them.”

“Oh, well, we all do,” young, wise Greta said.

“I know. Oh, well…look at this one of you holding the baby pig in Vermont…”

But this feeling persisted a little and was still with Nora when she awoke this morning. A tinge of regret and sorrow to her world. It would doubtless lift as her day went on. It was part of the human condition, that old state everyone was in. Life was simply sad if one looked at it like that but one didn’t have to, at least part of the time. But, again, she thought, where was that contentment old people were supposed to feel that was written about in prose and poetry? She couldn’t think of anyone in the Twilight Zone who seemed to possess it.

Wilma was still frowning as she had as a child, Tillie was still buying clothes in the children’s department and returning them because they were too small, Peggy was still as horny and helpless as ever, and Small Betty was suffering a daily crucifixion, Evan was slightly losing his mind, Jolene was seeing only the dark side of human nature, Shelta was packing in the calories as though she were faced with eminent starvation…

But there were a few apparently happy ones. Martha, with her sweet smile, and perhaps Sara, the gentle and kind, who had a steady glow of sanity within her.

So Nora made another vow in her phalanx of vows that, if portrayed in a movie of her life, would stretch up hill and dale, across limitless plains, up the sides of mountains… “Relax, ease up, don’t be so intense, don’t push so…God is nigh.”

Stuff

2007-12-19T06:59:00.000-08:00

Nora received a Christmas card yesterday evening slipped under her door. It was from Fred and he’d written on it: “Dearest Nora: It’s always nice to know someone as nice as you. It’s an honor to know you. May you and your family have a Joyous and Blessed Christmas.” Now her question is, does he mean those things? Does he have such a sweet nature? Or is he capable of guile and b.s.? She reflected isn’t it funny how we think we know people and it turns out we don’t, very much. She thought Fred did have a sweet and loving nature, perhaps even a simple nature. She wonders if Peggy got such a note. She wonders if men are largely more guileless than women.

Sara seems upset over things, like eating too many cookies, not sleeping very well, her cell phone not working, her internet not working. Nora thinks she may have a slight eating problem. As for herself, she doesn’t as long as she doesn’t diet. But she would like to lose one inch from around her waist so that her clothes fit better.

Sara indicated there was some talk going around that Jolene called Social Services about Birdie. But Sara said she didn’t think she would do that. She wouldn’t say exactly who her source was, only that “someone” passed it on to her. Sara sounded upset at hearing these things. Nora’s advice was to “ignore them. Things like this happen in a community.” (How does she know? Common sense, she guesses.)

Oh, about Cass. She still has her crush on him, as strong as ever. Does he feel the same way? Well, if one reads the tea leaves, he doesn’t, but Nora can be blind at times. She dare not take a misstep and make a fool of herself. Imagine, at her age! She has a present for him which she wrapped and put a tag on without writing on the tag yet. She doesn’t know what she is going to do with it, wait to see if Cass had anything for her, not that she wants him to or needs him to, it’s just that she doesn’t want to freak him out by gifting him if he has no plans to do likewise. If not, she could write her son-in-law’s name on the tag and give it to him. He’d open it and say “Thanks, Nora,” but he’d have a quizzical smile on his face that said, “Why in the heck are you giving me this?” The gift was a pretty pottery container full of biscotti, which Cass likes. Heigh-ho, heigh-ho. I am one crazy lady, Nora thought. Old lady.

It is the last full week before Christmas so she will get busy making marshmallow magic fudge and caramel corn to give to some of her friends here. Also, get a blood test on account of taking her arthritis medicine which could cause liver damage. (If it’s not one damn thing it’s t’uther that’ll kill ya.) What else is interesting about her life? Not much, reduced to the basics like this. That is why fiction is written, to use the powers of the imagination.

Big birthday party

2007-12-18T08:24:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was the “Big Birthday Party” and Harry came with his electronic setup and played and sang while they sat at card tables covered with colored plastic cloths and ate a gooey cake full of nuts and bits of dried fruit slathered with an icing that must’ve come out of a tube, either shaving cream or toothpaste, except it didn’t taste that good. They beat their fists on the tables and kept time to the music, and whenever Harry held back singing the words and waited for them, shouted out…”And when you caressed me …. (t’was then Heaven blessed me…).

Tillie was among the honorees because her birthday was the 11th. She was 74. Nora told her she had a T.L for her, except Tillie didn’t know what that was. Nora told her it was a “Trade Last,” a compliment, which she would tell her if, first, Tillie had one for her. (Something from grade school.) Tillie didn’t have one but Nora gave her the compliment anyway. She said Sara thought she was still in her sixties and Tillie beamed. She wore green—a soft shade of T shirt and some pants she’d bought in the girl’s department. They were tight on her.

As usual, the Dancing Ladies got up as well as Bruno and Jewel, who’d been married 65 years and knew each other’s moves perfectly. Inscrutable Shiko mimicked their steps, shadowing them.

Tillie made a caustic remark. “She’s such a show-off.”

Nora defended the tiny black-haired one. “But I love it. We need someone like her here.”

She had funny thoughts listening to the music. Most of the songs were romantic and harked back to their youthful days when they were in love or wished they were or had been or at least could know what that was.

In the dim past, when they had dark hair, smooth skin, bright eyes, good ears, straight bodies, quick minds, and could stay out all night dancing, smootching in dark cars atop bluffs overlooking twinkling lights of a town, drink booze from the bottle, share cigarettes whose tips glowed in the dark of the backseats, and the sweet liquor and tobacco tastes on their lips.

Looking around besides looking into her own heart, Nora saw moist eyes, faraway expressions, and down on the floor, misshapen feet in soft slippers or orthopedic shoes tapping to the beat of the music. Except for Tillie’s red toes in her scarcely-there open sandals that, when she walked, because of her bad leg, skewed a little sidewise off her foot. It was a wonder she didn’t send herself sprawling.

Nora felt an affection for these people that still surprised her. Was she getting to be a soft-hearted, soft-headed old dame halfway to the funny farm? Back in her old life she’d never have known any of them. Now, they were all keeping time together as the sands slowly trickled through the narrow passage of the hourglass.

Nora gets a package

2007-12-17T07:24:00.000-08:00

Saturday, Nora wandered down into the lobby about four and saw that there were a lot of people trimming the Christmas tree or rather just putting the finishing touches on it. All the ones she liked—Cass, Evan, Tillie, Peggy, Sara—and she was sorry she hadn’t thought to go down earlier but she hadn’t, had just pooped around her place on her computer. Actually, her going down at all was occasioned by the FedEx man calling to say he had a box for her and her meeting him. So she was carrying the box when she entered the big space filled with people mostly sitting down now admiring their handiwork on the Christmas decorations and making the little innocent small-talk they made.

Seeing her, Tillie waved, and Sara put out her hands for the box. “Moi?”

Nora went and sat between Cass and Tillie on the couch. Why wasn’t Peggy next to him? She said to Cass, “Get out your Swiss Army Knife and open this for me,” and he actually had one on his key ring (did all men?) and he obliged her. People now had gotten up to see what was in the box, like children. Tillie reached in to help her.

The first thing she drew out was a packing item—a plastic bubble that was so much in the shape of breast implants because it was divided in the middle and pretty huge that they all laughed and Cass took it and held it against his chest.

Then Tillie drew out a bottle of Oil of Olay lotion and Nora took out a black box. She opened it to reveal the watch she’d ordered out of her son Will’s catalog for his health service—long story and she didn’t want to go into all the details—

Sara said “Does Olay make watches?”

“No,” Nora said, with a small, secret smile like “I’ll tell you later only it’s not that interesting.” She slipped the watch on; it had a pop-up magnifying glass should she ever need such to look, for example, in a phone book. The band was too big on her. No matter. Tillie had it off her and onto her own wrist and got up to show someone.

It didn’t take much to amuse them. They were on leisure time; holding-pen time; lame duck time; they had no cares or worries in the world which of course was not true because they still had plenty, their families and their own health, but nature had relented a little, softening their brains so these things weren’t so sharp for them anymore. Or they had the ability to forget the cares and worries for long periods if forgetting can be called an ability.

Later in Tillie’s first-floor apartment, Nora put the inflated double bubbles up under her shirt on top of her already inflated boobs and tugged and stretched to pull her top back down over them.

“Wow!” Tillie said. “Look in the mirror.”

There was one right there so she did. The “outplant” had square edges. “I should give this to Peggy,” she said.

Everyone watched the football game Sunday. Fred went and got Arby’s to munch on, because several of them saved coupons from the Sunday newspaper to buy like five sandwiches for five dollars.

Nora still sometimes thinks of her old friends but not so often now. Her matriculation into her new world is almost complete.

Tillie and Polly fight

2007-12-14T07:24:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, Tillie and a woman named Polly got into an imbroglio. Nora didn’t witness it but Tillie came up to her this morning in the lobby and taking her hand as she does, said, “Polly almost hit me yesterday.”

Nora said, “Why, what happened?”

And Tillie proceeded to tell a rambling story about some snapshots being taken off the bulletin board including one of her with her little dog Taco Belle and her saying “Oh, I want that,” and reaching out and taking it, and Polly saying, “No, you can’t have it,” implying that it was the property of the establishment and destined for the eternal scrap book. “In fact,” Tille said with righteous or not indignation in her voice and her fierce flash of dark eyes, “she grabbed it from me. And I grabbed it right back. And then she drew back her fist to hit me.”

During this telling, the seriousness of which could not be gainsaid due to Tillie’s ability to express herself, Nora’s mind was trying to encompass what to her sounded like the height of ridiculousness.

Well, to make a long story short, little Shiko came up and interrupted, and Tillie stalked off as only she can do, so the conclusion of the story was not heard by Nora.

But…about an hour later when Nora had totally gotten her mind on something else, her phone rang and it was Tillie. Without preamble she said, “I’ve called the police on Polly.”

“You did what?” Nora exclaimed.

“For attempted assault,” Tillie said.

Nora, who was getting ready to go out for a luncheon date with her old birthday group, said, “Are you out of your mind?”

Well, obviously, Tillie was, for indeed the police were on their way, according to Tillie who said Jolene had encouraged her to call them. Nora paused to gather her thoughts. Insanity or simple senility, which? “Good Lord!” was all she could come up with, for she had to go.

The outcome of it was that Tillie did reconsider and called the police to tell them not to come but they came anyway and Nora has yet to hear the rest of the story because when she went down that evening with a pony of beer to watch the evening news with her, Tillie’s door was locked and the only answer to her knock was Taco Belle’s yap, yap, yap.

~~~~
Nora’s lunch with the birthday girls was at the home of D.J. who, when she answered the door, looked so dreadful that Nora was startled.

She was so shrunken that she must wear a size 0. She wore white jeans, a v-necked sweater the color of pistachio pudding under which was a green and white striped shirt, and athletic shoes. Her hair looked very strange, a kind of soft ginger color and pretty much askew. But it was her features that had changed so much. She looked like Nora’s aunt’s description, “Death warmed over.” In other words, she had the look of someone who wasn’t long for this world.

Shortly, the only other remnant of the proud birthday group came in, Babs, who didn’t look quite so other-worldly but still just a shell of her former self.

In putting away her new (to her) black leather jacket of which she was inordinately proud, Nora glanced at herself in the closet’s mirrored door. She did not yet have that hulled waspish look, in fact, she looked like a fat cocoon with her tummy. She felt positively brimming with vitality before the other two. There had used to be five of them but Karen and Rita had passed on. The thought went through Nora’s mind: when I am 100 I’ll take myself to lunch and order five glasses of Merlot. I’ll drink each one with a toast. “Happy Birthday, D.J., Babs, Karen, and Rita. Sorry you aren’t here with me.”

~~~
Nora relayed the tale of Tillie and Polly to Sara, and Sara said, “You and I are the only sane persons here.”

Big plans meet a small misstep

2007-12-12T08:22:00.000-08:00

A soft, light snow fell during the night. Nora just threw on her red plush bathrobe and slippers to go around the corner to feed Jolene’s cat. And what did she discover? Oh, ick! The furry creature had butt-dragged on the rug by the front door, leaving a small turd with its afterburner, overturned a wastebasket, and pulled the cushion off the desk chair! Fer heavens sakes! Was this feline anger at being left?

Brr, her ankles are cold in her ballet-type terry-cloth slippers. Drat, she’ll have to clean up after the cat. Before she steps in it.

Will they swim this morning or not? Pretty danged cold. She’ll be sooo glad when Jolene comes back…

Next month she’s going to be 82 which seems terribly old, one foot in Heaven. But that’s where they all are, sitting on the waiting benches in the vestibule. But she’s the type of old gal who will live to be a hundred although she hopes not so long. She doesn’t have any serious ailments except arthritis which is mostly in her hands. But it’s the spirit that gets worn out.

If she’s ever going to write that best-selling novel, she’d best get cracking.

All she’s doing is this bit every morning.

But she doesn’t want to write a novel unless she could pour her soul into it, create wonderful characters, use her imagination to its fullest. A love story, a funny story, a heartbreaking story, an exciting...

Oh, good Lord!

Anorexic woman and vitriolic woman

2007-12-11T08:06:00.000-08:00

Jolene called Nora last night to ask her to feed and litter-box her cat while she was, unexpectedly, off on a trip to Chicago. On the way to her apartment to learn about the feeding, etc., Nora met a woman in the hallway who didn’t live in the Twilight Zone. On impulse she asked her, “Are you Hanna’s sister?”

“Yes,” the woman said.

“How is she?”

The woman said, “Oh, so-so.”

Nora began to express sympathy for Hanna’s plight, which was a bit hard to do because no one knew exactly what was wrong with her, only that she was at death’s door and had been there for some time.

Hanna’s sister added, “I’ve just been to the doctor’s with her.”

“Ahh,” Nora clucked.

“And there isn’t a danged thing wrong with her.”

“What?”

“That’s right, except her not eating. The doctor told her that if she doesn’t eat she’s going to die.”

“You mean…”

“I mean—” the woman said, who never told her name or asked Nora’s—“she’s—what’s that word—begins with an ‘a’?”

“Anorexic?” Nora said.

“Yeah, anorexic. She’s got food but she won’t eat. But I just bought her a sandwich and she wolfed it down.”

Nora wanted to say, “Let’s get this straight: you mean that Hanna hasn’t got cancer or some other disease but looks the way she does and is on her last legs because she’s deliberately starving herself? And we—Shiko, Crabby Molly, Tillie and I— spent a whole morning mucking out her apartment because we felt so badly for her?” But instead, Nora said, “She must be very depressed.”

“She’s on antidepressants,” the sister said.

It occurred to Nora that the sister did look a bit put-out. She didn’t resemble Hanna because she had ample flesh on her. She said that she had put food in Hanna’s icebox and cabinets but she wouldn’t bother to fix anything, not even to open a can of soup. Why? That was the question. Well, obviously, she was a mental case, and that qualified for “sick.”

The two parted and Nora continued to Jolene’s apartment. Of course, she couldn’t keep this choice bit of news to herself. Jolene, who practically knew everything that happened in the Twilight Zone before it happened, was, for once, outdone. Her mouth fell open.

Then she told some tales about Hanna, in the days when she used to come downstairs, how she’d overheard her run another woman down, using the “b” word. “So, I can’t be too sympathetic,” Jolene said. “I just put her down for a rough ‘b’ herself.”

Nora, as she so often does in such situations, sought to remember lines from literature: Hamlet: “…there are more things in Heaven and on Earth than are dreamt of…in the Twilight Zone…”

They moved on to speak of other things and Jolene did her thing, which was to get progressively more steamed up and say some nasty things about some Zoners, emphasizing her remarks with flashes from her large, Zircon-green eyes, smiles of derision, frowns of disapproval, and much play of her hands in the air.

Nora felt she was being impaled verbally by a female Vlad. What if she ever fell out of favor with Jolene, would she be roasted (upon a spit) this way to others? Why was Jolene so vitriolic? What dark secret lay behind those eyes, what abuse had she suffered to make her so unloving?

Some who came in for Jolene’s wrath: Fred. (He was “slime under a rock”), Evan, because he wouldn’t admit he was growing senile (although Jolene tried to tell him), and several others, like Shelta, whom she said was as “dumb as dirt.”

It was really hard to listen to, not only because it was offensive, but it was interspersed with terms of endearment for Nora. Someday, Nora thought, she would confront her and let the chips fall where they may.

To bring you up to date

2007-12-10T08:13:00.000-08:00

Here are some of the people in the Twilight Zone and a few of their problems:

Tillie, a stroke that’s left her with a bad leg so she limps, a heart bypass, bad teeth, deafness, poor sight. Insecurity, a wildness of personality, anger, depression, cynicism.

Peggy, a stroke, cancer, poor hearing, helplessness, man-craziness because she never went through the dating period.

Small Betty, cruel back problem, still a great sweetness of nature.

Sara, bad knee, a touch of acid reflux, overwhelming compulsion to help others.

Jolene, bad hips, bad history with men, a poisonous outlook on most other people.

Crabby Molly, emphysema from smoking for 68 years, an abusive husband, anger. Eats too many prunes, sometimes.

Shelta, “limited horizons,” food addict, has the shopping disease, kitschy apartment.

Birdie, simple senility. But young at heart. Limited wardrobe.

Inez, the same.

Ralph, lost a leg up to the knee from neuropathy, also the toes on the other foot. The talking disease. A great chili maker.

Cass, lost most of his hair, diabetic, loves sweets, poor taste in women.

Evan, turns every conversation into talk about Indians.

Fred, gimpy leg. And, some say, lecherousness.

Shiko, unspeakable sorrow and a bad heart but a loving, giving nature.

Polly, seriously bipolar besides being a bitch. Oh, and her fanny is getting bigger.

Effie, diabetes and high blood pressure, watch out for her “homemade” cakes.

Mildred and Charles, walking zombies.

Ancient Archie, the Shangri La disease (great old age held at bay), deafness (but a lovely diamond stud earring in one ear).

Nora, a touch of arthritis. Childhood emotional scars. Deafness, snoring, and thinning hair. But b.o.b.’s.

Some recent doings

Pizza night with movie, foot clinic, bus trip to see Christmas lights.

Hardly anyone cooks anymore but eats prepared things. (Except one certain lady on third floor.)

No one sleeps a full night any more at the proper time. Except Big Betty, who gets about 12 hours a night.

On the giveaway bench: ceramic piggy bank, cat food, bedroom slippers, Christmas decos, new pair of men’s ski gloves, tongue scraper.

What’s Coming Up

Ping-pong table (maybe)
Added bus to mall for Christmas shopping
Cookie exchange
White Elephant party

P.S

Peggy uses baby wipes, hee, hee. She buys the economy-sized dispenser box from the Mart of the Wal. Wonder if she’s gotten Cass to.

About Jolene

2007-12-07T08:12:00.000-08:00

Jolene used to be in public relations. She’s a very pretty woman with soft reddish-brown hair and large blue-green eyes. She’s younger than most in the Twilight Zone and doesn’t have many wrinkles. She dresses stylishly, mostly in vivid colors, particularly aqua, and she walks with an upright bearing that shows off her pouter-pigeon figure. She has a ready laugh and quick intelligence. Her conversation is sprinkled with several pet phrases that remind one, if one is computer-literate, of toggles inserted into documents; hit one key and a whole phrase bursts onto the page. This probably helped in Jolene’s work, having the appropriate thing to say stored in “memory” so to speak.

If she’s talking—which she does quite a bit of—and one agrees with something she’s said, she’ll say quickly, “Thank you,” and proceed on. It’s not thanking the person for anything they’ve given her but that they’ve made her uphill battle to make people understand easier. She also does “quote marks” in the air for emphasis.

The men here have flocked to her, notably Fred and Evan. But it’s rumored they’ve found her hard to deal with. She speaks her mind and can easily cut them to ribbons. It’s said she has a pipeline into everything that goes on in the Twilight Zone even though she’s been here only a short time. She knows just about everything about everyone and it’s mostly “dirt.” Like in the old-time gossip columns that “spilled the dirt.”

Nora met her in the hall yesterday and they visited. Nora casually said, “How come it’s so hot up here in the hallway?

“Because the building is so shoddily constructed,” Jolene said.

Someone walked by with a small dog on a leash; the little gnome woman, Donna. Jolene and Nora said hello, and she stopped and they petted the dog, some sort of a Sharpei or something Nora couldn’t quite catch with her hearing, and because Donna puts her tongue forward when she speaks, like a lisper.

After she’d gone, Jolene said, “She bangs something in the kitchen at all hours of the night.”

Nora said “Hhmp,” a comment she’s perfected to signify whatever her listener wants it to.

“Thank you,” Jolene said.

Detroit Dick went by and the two women greeted him. “The old windbag,” Jolene said after he was by.

“He is, kind of,” Nora said.

“Thank you,” Jolene said.

Feeling more was needed, Nora added, “I wonder what Effie sees in him.” A loaded question inside of a statement.

Jolene put out her hand in another of her “toggle” responses. This was rubbing her thumb over her fingers in the universal gesture that means “moolah, spondulicks, the green stuff.”

“You think so?” Nora lightly challenged.

“Ohhhhh, yeah,” Jolene affirmed, her large eyes growing larger. “He’s got that big pension.”

“Hhmp,” Nora said. She changed the subject. “I wonder how Vonnie is?”

Vonnie is a woman on the first floor who’s had a stroke. She’s very tall and when she walks she looks like a large cypress tree swaying in the wind on a cliffside. Maybe because her hair is long and flowing.

Jolene said, “Her family is moving her to a nursing home.” Well, that was news Nora had heard.

“Too bad,” Nora said.

“Humpff,” Jolene snorted through her delicate nostrils, as velvety and large-apertured as a prize Arabian’s. “It’s time. Have you noticed when you walk by her door the reek?”

Nora had to admit she hadn’t so got no toggled “Thank you.”

“She’s incontinent,” Jolene said. “And it’s awful. The management should’ve done something about it before now.”

This was all news to Nora but she tried not to show her surprise (and ignorance). “That’s too bad,” she said, again for lack of knowing what else to say.

Jolene shook her head. “There’s quite a few more here that should go off to the funny farm.”

Nora could only shrug.

“Thank you,” Jolene said. And they parted.

Walking down the hallway toward her own apartment, Nora mused. What did Jolene say about her to other people? Did her snoring penetrate the shoddily constructed walls? Was her TV too loud? Were her potluck offerings too stingy?

She decided to go and visit Tillie to “cleanse her palate” which Tillie could help her do in her inimitable way.

“Thangkew,” she’d say.

Shiko and Birdie fight

2007-12-05T09:46:00.000-08:00

Yesterday afternoon, Shiko got awfully mad at Birdie over something. Nora was down there but couldn’t make head nor tail out of what went on.

Shiko was like a miniature volcano just about to erupt, and one had to almost physically restrain her with their arms and hands to keep her lid on. She sputtered and fumed, smoke practically coming out of the top of her utterly black hair, like the hair on one of those porcelain dolls from the Orient.

Shiko’s face is triangular in shape, wide at the forehead, narrowing to a point of a chin, held in place by the fierce little recessed eyes under finely lowering brows. Moisture condensed on her face and ran down as she spoke in her pidgin English that wasn’t really pidgin but sounded like it.

She was mad at Birdie because of something Birdie said. She could’ve been just mad at Birdie because of her “aura,” an amalgam of garlic and small blacks—the cigars she smokes.

But it had to do with a woman named Hanna who is very sick. Apparently, both had been visiting her or ministering to her, and Shiko thought Birdie belittled her efforts. Or something like that. It was too much for Nora to figure out. All she could do was try to soothe the small Vesuvius.

She said, “Birdie is losing it.” She made a circular motion with her finger against her head. But Shiko didn’t seem to know the universal sign for daffiness or else didn’t accept that as an excuse for whatever Birdie had said or done. More later on this, maybe.

Mailman fixes lights

2007-12-04T08:02:00.000-08:00

“The Stepmother took us first to stay with her sister’s family in Firsole, the most magical of old towns from which the boy Fra Angelico should have been able to see the skyline of Florence as the golden beckoning cupolas of the heavenly city. The dear couple could not have been kinder to us or more solicitous.

“There,” she said, as brightly as she could, “The best Sunday school picture ever painted. Admire it please.”

I stared at the Taxman, who, with his back to us, was exhibiting Nureyev legs and the sort of shell-pink blouson that male Florentines of the time evidently went in for. Father was nodding and nodding, saying nothing.

“There’s no such story in the Bible,” I said. I saw the Stepmother and the sister’s husband exchange slightly arch looks.”

----

Nora looked at the passage she’d just put down. It was from a book written by a British writer. It was elegant writing, in her opinion, and she wished she wrote like that. Well, what was stopping her? She tried a descriptive passage:

“They were all sitting in the lobby, the usual—Peggy, Cass, Evan, the acid-tongued Molly whom Nora has about decided has a disorder, like simple nervosa, Inez-wander-head, tiny Birdie, and red-faced Jack (as distinguished from dark-faced Jack). Nora was always slightly nervous when she came upon the bunch because their gazes went to a newcomer. Should she break out in a soft-shoe shuffle? She was never one for the wide, easy smile. Hers was small and cramped like a split in a lemon.

“Hi,” they all said, some raising a hand.

“Hi,” she said back.

Oh, and the tiny Jap was there with her obsidian eyes and shining hair cut and fit to her head like a jet-black stone with facets…”

Nora went over to her and made as if to sit upon her diminutive lap but Shiko slithered to the side, and Nora insinuated herself next to her, between her and Birdie, who turned to face her with her plummy eyes in which was a sweet look as if the plums had simmered down in the pot.

The mailman arrived, he whom they had all been waiting for as if they expected love letters and checks in their slots instead of what they got, adverts, utility bills, and invitations to the various churches around. “There he is,” they cried out.

Cass got up and did a little dance, and Nora wished she had the pizzazz to have gotten up with him. He wore his usual jeans with belt and white long-sleeved tucked-in Henley placket shirt. She noticed he had slight “love handles” above the belt. The sight of them made her want to hold them. He turned around and smiled at her! Peggy gave her a look from her washed-sky blue eyes.

Someone said to the mailman, “Our Christmas tree lights are out.”

The lovely fellow set down the stack of mail he had taken out of his canvas box and went over to address the situation. He began to pluck the socket ends of the cords from between the green branches and unplug and replug them while they watched in admiration. Birdie murmured in her yentl accent, “He’s our hero.” And lo and behold, the tree burst into many colored lights!

“Wow!” red-faced Jack said, “Whaddaya do?”

The swarthy fellow, who, if you met in a dark alley somewhere would make you fear for your life/virtue/pocketbook, merely grinned modestly. They gave him a round of applause and he went to finish putting the mail up in their boxes. When he was done, they went to pluck it out, and it was as expected, meager indeed.

A Monday morning

2007-12-03T08:42:00.000-08:00

It is cold this morning. Nora had left the patio door open several inches and a deep chill invaded her tiny dwelling place.

She felt in a slight funk which was a strange place for her to be, who was usually so buoyant. Would Sara be distant today at the pool? Should she talk to Sara about her perceived feelings via her re Rush? How would she herself feel if someone she had previously had good feelings about told her that she was a “Limbaughite”? But she really wasn’t, she only tuned in, infrequently, because she was intellectually curious, eclectic, amused, bemused…

~~~

Tillie and Peggy came up to Nora’s apt yesterday afternoon to see what she’d got at the thrift Saturday: a great casserole dish she will give to her daughter and son-in-law but which she’d like to keep herself but won’t because it is very deep and will hold lots of mashed potatoes or slumgullion so they can use it much more often than her who has no one now to cook for but herself. It’s handmade by someone who signed it “Bear,” 1989. She paid $4.95 for it.

She also showed them a black leather jacket she’d bought for half-price of ten bucks. It’s pretty nice, only has a few scuffs in the leather which she’d inked with a permanent marker to hide, only trouble was in the light the ink showed some iridescent green color in it like the glow from a raven’s wing. She also got two tops, a pretty red one made of tie-died cotton and a blue v-neck sweater, cotton. Tillie’s gaze, sharp even without her specs, seemed to linger over the edge of ink on the jacket’s pocket while she pursed her mouth but said nothing.

~~~

This week is full of activities. Trim the tree party, Tillie’s bead party, potluck brunch on Friday, and a few things in between Nora can’t remember now.

Neighbor puts in key wrong

2007-11-30T15:40:00.000-08:00

This morning, a woman named Dolly, a neighbor of Nora’s, was trying to put her key in her lock the wrong way, that is, perpendicularly when it should have been horizontally. Nora helped her, thinking that Dolly was one of the “walking dead.” Not to be macabre, but Dolly looks to be at least 110 years old. Anyway, Dolly told her that the other night, “someone banged and banged” on her door, and that the clock in her bedroom said “two-twenty.”

“In the morning?” Nora asked, and Dolly nodded vigorously. Well, not exactly vigorously, but as much as she could. “Did you open the door?”

“Of course not.”

“Could you see who it was?” The door has a peephole.

“No, I couldn’t.” But, Dolly went on to say, before that, at some indefinite time, she’d heard “someone” outside her door trying different keys in the lock to get in. “And I saw who it was.”

“Who?”

It was the man named Ray, who’d been asked to leave the Twilight Zone some time ago by the management. Nora asked Dolly if she was sure. “Oh, yes,” the aged one said. Nora was mystified over what Dolly had told her and repeated it to a few people.

Some hours later, she met Dolly downstairs. Dolly said to her, “Are you the one I told about Ray at my door?” So it appears Dolly’s memory or her eyesight or both might be a tad lacking. But now it seems that the banished Ray might be taking on the status of a legend in the Twilight Zone because others talk about him.

Jolene said “he has a rap sheet as long as your arm.”

For what? Petty thievery, drunkenness and disorderly conduct.

Another women said that her IPod that she had “definitely” left on her kitchen counter was missing. Ray? Who else? Several more sightings of him were reported by various people. But how could he get into someone’s apartment?

Nora had seen him when he used to live here. He had preternaturally black hair for an old man which meant he dyed it, and wore a baseball cap backwards. But he also seemed very religious. He told Nora when they rode the elevator together once that he prayed for all the people in the Zone. Hmm. More on the Legend of Ray as it grows.

Once Tillie knocked on Nora’s door at five-thirty in the morning but that was because she had a bad toothache. As if Nora could do anything to help that. Except maybe sock her in her jaw to numb it. Which N had felt like doing.

Rumors abound

2007-11-28T15:51:00.000-08:00

There’s a new picture in the lobby, a glamour shot of a woman with lots of light, curly hair and a pretty face. She’s about 25 or 30, slim because her face is slim. Right away, Nora guessed a woman named Hanna who is currently up on three dying from some terribly wasting disease. She never comes out of her apartment, and a few devoted souls go there to make sure she’s eating and is still alive. But she’s not eating because she looks like a cadaver. (So Nora was told.)

Rumors abound: the latest one is that she isn’t so sick but is anorectic. Nora thinks the woman has cancer and should be in a hospice where she’d be properly looked after. Molly however succeeded in seeing Hanna yesterday and reported to Tillie that she “looked like death warmed over. Her arms were like this…” and Molly made tiny circles with her thumb and forefinger. “And you can’t even walk through there it is such a mess, stuff piled everywhere, all kinds of crap…” Oh, and “she’s taken her feeding tube out.” That must mean Hanna is “shutting down.” Sad. The reality of life in the Twilight Zone. Now and then someone is going to slip into that dark night.

But the picture isn’t of Hanna; it’s of a woman named Wilma, so Sara divulged when Nora pressed her. Sara said she had seen that picture at Wilma’s.

Speaking of Wilma—she lives in the apartment directly under Nora’s. Wilma swears that Nora “clumps around at night” and disturbs her sleep. Of course, she doesn’t. But Wilma has complained to people. Sara did a test. She visited Wilma, first alerting Nora to start walking about in two minutes. Nora walked back and forth in her apartment continuously for five minutes, her normal tread. Sara called later to say she heard nothing. She tried to dissuade Wilma of her misplaced accusation but she wasn’t having any of it.

Cass is becoming more attentive to Nora! He jollies with her when they meet instead of ignoring her as he used to do. Heigh-ho, what about Peggy’s crush on him? ‘Course, if he ever sidled up to N, she’d play the noble and say, “Another has eyes for youuu…”

Listening to Limbaugh

2007-11-27T07:47:00.000-08:00

Yesterday the ladies went swimming after which they had coffee at Starbucks and Nora told the other two, Sara and Shelta, that, “You will not believe, but when I’m in my car in the afternoon, I listen to…”

Sara said “Now don’t tell me you listen to Rush Limbaugh,” and Nora acknowledged that “Yes,” she did, upon which Sara got up with her cup and moved to another table with Nora laughing and reaching out to her. Sara stood for a moment at the other table holding her cup and looking mock-shocked but then she came back and sat down and the three began to talk, sputteringly.

Shelta brought up the old charge against Limbaugh of excoriating druggies while himself being guilty of using his maid to get prescriptions filled. “Someone who does that, well, I could never like,” and she went on so much about it that Nora would’ve liked to squelch her. Not that the argument wasn’t valid against the Rushbag. But it was such old hat.

It was Sara who seemed the most affronted although she didn’t go into detail.

Finally Nora was forced to point out that she had said she “listened to Limbaugh, I didn’t say I agreed with him.” But maybe that got lost in the shuffle. Besides, something a little perverse and ornery in Nora made her let her two companions think she was against the grain of their more enlightened thinking. Or simply, she was a bit pissed they rushed to judgment so. Also, it was obvious neither of them ever listened to the man so how could they judge? Old Rush occasionally said something she could agree with, and he was—usually—warm and cordial to callers. But if she wanted to remain friends with these two fellow Twilighters she’d better not admit that.

Afterwards Sara took them to a shop that was like stepping into a Hong Kong or perhaps New Delhi marketplace. All that Gobi Desert- Himalaya-type stuff. And then they had lunch at a restaurant called Chinese Gourmet, and that was very good. The lunches were quite reasonable, $5.95, and came with soup and an egg roll. Nora got her favorite, Sesame Chicken. A pleasant morning spent with good people. Except for the Rushbag thing.

Oh—one more small item. At the swimming pool she surprised herself by going into the group showers, saying to Sara, “shut your eyes and move over.” So her cellulite-dimpled butt was on display to the world. If the world even cared.

Tillie's picture, eternal lights

2007-11-25T13:15:00.000-08:00

Tillie was quite a beauty when she was younger and has the pictures to prove it. She showed a bunch of them to Nora, and Nora was impressed.

“You should give this one to the office for their little game of ‘guess who’” Nora said. It was of Tillie in some kind of a costume, a very short skirt, a spangley top, and a little hat.

Tillie said, “Oh, everyone will know who it is. I haven’t changed.”

“You think?” Nora said.

“No, not that much. Just my hair a little.”

Nora saw that Tillie was serious. To her eye, she was unrecognizable as the young beauty in the picture. “Hmm,” was all she could say. “Well, do you mind if I give it to Susan?”

“Hell, I don’t care,” Tillie said. “But everyone will guess it.”

“We’ll see,” Nora said. It was obvious Tillie was serious; deluded, but serious. Nora reflected that when she gave the manager her own picture to put up—and which was currently up in the lobby for people to guess who it was—she had thought the same thing: it was so obvious who it was, even though the picture was of a beguiling two-year-old. Surely the Zoners could see, if they had half an eye, that it could only be her, Nora, because she had the same smile and eyes, and her dark hair, it must be appreciated, had only turned to silver eons later.

But to Nora’s surprise, even her closest friends in the Zone didn’t know it was her. Now the picture had been up almost a week, and Tuesday at the coffee talk, it would be identified. Nora had peeked into the shoe box and seen that there were only a few folded slips of paper. The least amount there’d ever been. Jolene and Tillie did not know who it was! Tillie said she “had no idée.” Small Betty shook her head. “I give up.” Shika took up the picture and danced around the room with it. “Oh, it’s so cute,” she said. “I want it.” Nora was sitting there in the lobby with them. “Do you know who it is?” they asked her. She shook her head. “Nope.” Only Sara knew who it was because she’d seen it in Nora’s apartment. And she wasn’t talking.

≈

Tillie is bored out of her gourd on the weekends. At the resident forum she suggested that the management put in a ping-pong table and a pool table. Good idees. But also good luck on getting them. Maybe someone will donate them to the poor old folks.

∞

The Twilight Zone is the Land of Eternal Light. Because people get up during the night. Tillie probably the earliest, at about two, followed often by Sara at three-thirty, and this morning, Nora at four-thirty. The other morning, Jolene was seen coming down the hall with a plate of warm, fresh-baked cookies at six to give to someone. She’d been up since four. Why can’t these people sleep?

Nora’s theory, for herself at least, is that she pounds the pillow so hard during the first part of the night—her REM sleep from 10:30 to about 3:30—that she packs the equivalent of seven or eight hours into those five hours. She sleeps like a drunken sailor and, of course, snores her head off. She knows this—besides having been told it—because she wakes up with a dry, scratchy throat. She’d like to get one of those “sleep-gards” she’s seen on the ‘net that fit on your teeth, bringing your lower jaw forward a little, but they cost almost a hundred dollars, and they may not work or be too bothersome to wear. Good thing she doesn’t have a lover, unless he snored too, and then she’d want to kill him.

Tillie is furious with Peggy because Peggy is so caught up with her man, Cass. She asked Peggy to take her to the bingo place Saturday, and Peggy said she and Cass were “not going in that direction.” Tillie said both of them were “as vacant as deserted buildings.”

Attitude of Gratitude Pot Luck

2007-11-22T08:13:00.000-08:00

A lot of people came, guests of those who live here. Nora didn’t have guests but sat with Tilly and her son Matt and his girlfriend. Peggy had two of her family there plus Cass sat with her in his eternal baseball cap. So maybe he is interested in her but Nora doesn’t see why.

The food was great: turkey with mashed potatoes, candied sweets, dressing, gravy, cranberries, potato salad, fruit salads, a couple of unrecognizable things, rolls, and then the dessert table on which sat Nora’s offering, a carrot cake (which apparently is everyone’s favorite dessert). Also, pumpkin and pecan pies, and a pumpkin cheesecake which Tilly said was pretty yucky. The pretty lady, Jolene, made it or probably created it from a mix. The dinner started at six and was over by about seven-thirty.

There was one thin sliver of carrot cake left atop a mound of crumbs and icing shards so Nora took it up to Sara, who hadn‘t come to the dinner, and she was delighted. Said it was her favorite dessert. She was packing to leave to visit family for Thanksgiving.

~~~~

Yesterday Nora visited with Small Betty and Wilma at the round table where the jigsaw puzzles are worked. She asked Betty what she was bringing to the pot luck and she said “mashed or baked potatoes.”

“Oh, I don’t think I want any of those,” Nora said, wrinkling her nose.

“Oh, why not?”

“’Mashtorbate’ potatoes?”

The two ladies burst into laughter. Nothing like a good laugh.

~~~

Nora’s reading Elizabeth George’s book, “What Happened before He Shot Her.” How’s that for a title? George is, of course, an English author, (the book isn’t new) and Nora formerly didn’t care too much for her stories, but she must say this one is cracking good. Her characters are a bunch of Jamaicans living in ghetto-like circumstances in a part of London. They speak almost pidgin English, at which George is masterful. Ordinarily, dialect all through a novel is a pain, but here it sounds just right and really brings the people to vivid life. One word they keep repeating after making some statement is “innit.” That must mean “isn’t it?”

Weather continues mild and nice for November but a big change is coming.

Nora tried doing her hair like the woman at the Salon styled it, with dubious results. She parted it on the right side instead of the left, used a spray gel and slight blow-drying with a curling brush. She just straightened her hair out.

She wishes she had some of that carrot cake left herself. It’s everyone’s favorite dessert, innit?

Shopping with Tillie

2007-11-20T12:29:00.000-08:00

TIlly Is constitutionally unable to go shopping in a half-hour. She went with Nora to Wal-Mart yesterday and both of them said they didn’t have much to buy. “Okay,” Nora showed her her watch, “It’s a quarter of two. How about half an hour, two fIfteen?”

“Okay,” Tillie said.

“And here, right here,” Nora said, “by the MacDonald’s.”

“Okay,” Tillie said, anxious to be off.

Nora remembered the last time they were to meet at Wal-Mart, Tillie waited for her at the opposite end of the store. Nora watched her disappear in her lavender velour running suit, holding onto a buggy which helped her walk, her white head bobbing like a dandelion’s gone to seed.

Nora got her buggy and headed for the grocery section. She really had only to get some cheese, that wonderful Vermont Cabot extra sharp cheddar, which sold at W-M for $6.77 for a two-pound brick. On the way she picked up a few other things. Then she had time to meander more into the belly of the beast. It was moderately crowded. She looked at women’s socks in case there’d be purple but no, and bras in case there’d be a black front closure in her sIze, no.

The minutes went by and she checked out and went to the east entry of the store by the Golden Arches to await her frIend, exactly at 2:15. Of course, she wasn’t there, and didn’t come, didn’t come. Nora kept scanning people passing by but no one looked like her. She could spot her a mile away which one can practically do in a Wal-Mart. At about two-thirty, Nora saw her making her way toward her with a pretty full cart. Nora gave her the angry eye but then felt sorry for her, she looked so damned old and decrepit.

Tillie came up to her. “I am so nervous,” she said. “I just can’t shop like this, being pushed all the time.”

“It’s all right,” Nora said, as they made their way to the car. “Calm down.” But Nora secretly thought this would be her last time to take her. But of course it wouldn’t be. They were skewered by care. She can’t really help it. She is an impulse buyer, unlike me.

Tillie said, “I tried on some boots but they were all too damned big.”

----

Last night they played poker, four of them, Shelta, TIlly, Peggy and Nora, with Shiko and Jill kibitzing. Peggy vacant as usual, Shelta jovial as usual. Each of them invested about $1.67 in blue, white, and red chips. They played fIve-card draw, deuces wild and a little seven-card stud. Peggy surprisingly won a few pots. They talked of swimming the next morning and someone asked Peggy if she wanted to go. She said, “I don’t know yet.”

Nora said, “She’s having her period,” and everyone burst into laughter, Shiko so hard she almost collapsed on the table. Nora didn’t know she could appreciate English so well. It didn’t take a whole lot to amuse them. She also told them that Cass had paid her a compliment. They all said “Ooooo.” She said “We were standing outside and Cass said, ‘I love your car.’” Ha, ha. For a moment she had Peggy going. She could see it in her pale blue eyes. Then she relaxed.

Tomorrow they have their “Attitude of Gratitude” potluck dinner with turkey and gravy and stuffing supplied by the management and them bringing side dishes. Most everyone who signed up wrote they were bringing a dessert. Well, that’s okay. Nora was making a carrot cake. She had lots of carrots left over from making a carrot cake for her daughter’s birthday in September. Only a few of them have sprouted whiskers.

Shiko's Thank-You Party

2007-11-19T05:15:00.000-08:00

The party to express appreciation for all Shiko does in the Twilight Zone was a huge success. She got a mound of presents and cards and opened them to cheers and applause. Then different people got up and told how much the little Nipponese woman had helped them at various times in their lives. Mostly it had been when they’d been sick or had just moved in and were feeling forlorn.

Crabby Molly got up and said that when she had her “trouble” (brought on by sixty-five-plus years of nonstop smoking which she still does) Shiko brought her soup.

Tillie lurched to her feet and told how her toes had been operated on and the steel rods that had been inserted (ouch!) to fix her “hammer toes” had been removed, Shiko had taken Taco Belle for her constitutionals.

Others gave similar testimony. But the highpoint was when the very ill woman from the third floor came in, accompanied by an attendant. This was Hanna, who truly looked like she’d risen Lazarus-like for the occasion. She is a tall woman, now a stick figure, with blade-like features, sunken eyes, a ghostly pallor, and hair that looked like it had grown in a casket (not to be morbid). She sat down at table with Tillie, Nora, and Shelta, and none of them knew what to say to her except “Hello” and “have some cake and ice cream.” Which she did and ate.

Hanna did not get up and say what Shiko had done for her. She didn’t have to; her presence there said everything, the mere fact that she had come downstairs in her winding sheets for the party was testament enough. The tiny one came over and embraced her for long moments and people’s eyes teared and they clapped. It was a truly touching moment.

There were lighter moments too. Celeste, the Spanish-Dancer Lady, decked out in a fiesta-type dress and a large hat with red flowers on it, stood at her electronic keyboard and tortured the ears of her listeners unmercifully. Or maybe this was just Nora’s reaction. But then she played La Cucaracha, the Cockroach, and Shiko got up to dance. To watch her was a delight.

She wore a short black dress that had black fringe on the short sleeves and the skirt (where does one buy such things, in the Barbie dept?), and tiny black heeled shoes—size 2—and upon her wizened little face the coolest, sleekest look of a totally poised person as she snapped her fingers and swayed her diminutive body in time to the music. She possesses true pizzazz or else she has indomitable courage to be able to function like that in the limelight. Nora knew she would’ve cratered if it’d been her. All in all, t’was a truly moving occasion.

Sara was there and Nora went over to her and they talked and Sara said “come play Scrabble later,” which Nora did, for three hours, from four to seven. But half the time they were talking. Nora told Sara the plot of a novel she’d written and never been able to get published. In her wonderful way, Sara gave all the right strokes, that she loved the idea, etc. Nora expanded like a puff adder. How nice to have a muse! S urged Nora to send it out again and again. Peut-etre.

Possible sainthood

2007-11-16T09:35:00.000-08:00

A party is being held this afternoon to honor Shiko for all she does in the Twilight Zone. Cake and ice cream will be served and there will be entertainment.

The small Oriental woman deserves that for she is forever helping someone. She organized the cleaning of Hanna’s apartment, enlisting the help of Crabby Molly, Nora, and Tillie. By the way, Hanna is still, apparently, among the living, although no one’s seen her for a few days. Hmm.

Shiko even befriends Tillie who isn’t the most popular lady here because of her irascibility. Or maybe Shiko just likes to play with Tillie’s little dog Taco Belle.

Sara and Jolene have expressed puzzlement at Nora’s loyalty to Tillie. Nora doesn’t quite know what to say to them in defense of Tillie. That she likes people who are “flawed”? That makes her sound too superior. Besides, Sara would say, “We are all flawed.” That Tillie’s interesting? Well, yes, but rude with interesting gets a bit tiresome. “We can really talk.”

“But don’t we?”

So Nora shrugs and lets it go by. She just likes Tillie for some reason and feels at home with her. Going into her dark, shabby apartment is like slipping into an old pair of shoes.

~~~~

Shiko’s ascendancy to near Sainthood isn’t sitting too well with one of the other residents, namely, Effie. She said to Sara, “But I do a lot here too,” in an aggrieved voice. Oh, these egos.

As Nora says to Sara, she herself “avoids helping people.”

“Oh, that’s not so,” Sara says.

“Kind of,” Nora maintains. “I spent too many years in servitude to my family.”

Sara mock frowns.

“I used to fantasize about being alone on a desert island,” Nora says, “on a white sand beach with the blue waters lapping.”

“C’mon,” Sara says, “we all did that. But you love your family.”

Nora reluctantly agrees ‘tis so. “But, boy, I am burnt out on helping people.”

“Yet you still do,” Sara says. Nora merely shakes her head. She loves to play the bad person sometimes. She would never lay claim to sainthood like Effie.

After gossip come recriminations

2007-11-15T08:11:00.000-08:00

This morning, after coffee yesterday at Starbucks with Sara, Nora feels recriminations. Not that Sara delivered them; only, now and then, a thoughtful look.

They got onto the subject of sex—an unusual one for Sara, who is the Queen’s Lady—because Nora had been to the doctor recently for her yearly physical, got a couple moles zapped, and one of those examinations so dear to women’s hearts.

She could not help but confide this unexpected tid-bit of information: the doc said she had a “very young looking vagina” because her estrogen levels were good; for her age, of course. He said it had a rough surface, like corduroy, meaning with ridges, which was how young women’s looked. Well, if you have it, flaunt it!

Sara was properly impressed.

Nora, not-so-mock-ruefully, added, “Probably because it was so seldom visited.”

Sara said her marriage had been different. “If our sex life had been any better we’d never have gotten out of bed.”

Wow! How great that would have been. Nora burned with envy. And in context somehow, it came out that she still also burned with desire.

“Really?” Sara said. “Oh, I’m through with all that,” and she made a sweeping gesture over the area of her loins.

It seemed natural then to reveal about Peggy’s, libido, remarkable for a seventy-nine-year-old. “Her’s must be wide-wale.” Sara laughed heartily.

(Remember, when you see an old lady on the street, you simply can’t know what goes on in her knickers.)
~~~

Nora is bored with herself and feels she has to occupy herself with something besides a little writing in the morning and talking—gossiping—with the people here. She said to Sara that she might go to the new natural foods store that’s opening close by and see if they’d hire her.

Sara said “Oh, but you’d be on your feet and they might want you to lift sacks of potatoes.”

Cleaning Hanna's apartment

2007-11-13T08:16:00.000-08:00

A woman in the Twilight Zone named Hannah is near death. She’s been that way for months. Everyone says they expect her to be “gone” in no time but so far… She apparently has some terrible wasting disease, probably cancer. She’s been a smoker and still is.

Yesterday, four of the women cleaned up her apartment. Tillie, Shiko, Crabby Molly, and Nora. Hannah almost didn’t let them in but then did, reluctantly. Nora had never been there before. She was prepared for something awful but not enough. It was unbelievable.

After opening the door to them, Hannah collapsed on the couch. It was almost completely dark inside. Nora was so used to her own light-filled apartment with the windows on three sides. There were draperies and valences, dark rugs on the beige carpet, dark furniture, and then…all that was sitting around. Like in a warehouse where truckers simply unload freight cars, and no one puts it away on shelves. A plethora of stuff. In boxes, new, never been opened, out of boxes but the boxes still there, clothing, pillows, blankets, shoes, belts, pictures, newspapers and magazines, junk mail, food, boxes of liquid nourishment, electronic equipment, several large components, dishes, glasses, the dregs and dreck of a life that was nearing its end, and for a long time has been unable to care for itself.

Hannah has a son in town but where is he? The poor lady looked dreadful. She looked like the worst ad for no smoking. She’s a tall woman with stick limbs, sunken cheeks, lank grey hair, grey skin, hopeless eyes. Nora’s heart and surely the others’ sank. This poor lady should be in a clean, sunny, loving hospice to await the release that death would bring her, not in this Collyer Brothers nightmare. And how could they make any order out of it? And that was only the living room.

The bedroom was the same only more so. Hannah obviously did not sleep in the bed because it was piled high with Christmas decorations, stuffed animals, family pictures, clothing, and more boxes of unopened whatevers. The good Samaritans looked at each other. Hannah had her eyes closed, so they just began, like beavers nibbling away at the edge of chaos. Shiko, the Sainted and often Possessed One, began putting things into some plastic storage containers that were conveniently there. Tillie busied herself in a corner beside a tall bookcase, making room on it to stow some bric-a-brac, Molly shook out some trash bags and began to separate what could be saved and what could be thrown away. Nora, who was much taller than Shiko (she could fit comfortably under N’s arm) began to assist the indomitable Japanese lady with stowing the boxes she filled up on closet shelves and when that slowed, simply picked up objects and piled them atop each other in whatever recess she could find in the closets.

There was no order to what they did because Hannah would not ever be looking for anything again that she needed, like those Christmas ornaments or the hi-fi equipment or washcloths still skewered together from Wal-Mart’s.

It grew hot and stuffy; the bedroom was as dark as the living room with the same heavy, oppressive draperies on the windows that had a north exposure. The women muttered to themselves, finally spoke aloud because it seemed Hannah was beyond hearing them and if she wasn’t, understanding or caring what they did.

But mostly they worked in silence, pausing only to wipe their brows. Nora, for this occasion, had donned her overalls because she welcomed the infrequent opportunity to wear them. She had finally remembered not to let the straps fall in the toilet when she went but since it was so much trouble to undo everything, she put off going for longer than usual.

Finally, they had the bed cleared and could make it up with fresh linen. Nora found a lamp in a corner without a bulb and went to her place for one, returned and plugged in the lamp and voila! it worked and she found a shade up high somewhere. They’d cleared off a nitestand, too, so now the room looked somewhat inviting for a poor sick soul to lay itself down in. That is, if Hannah had the strength to get up off the couch.

Finally, they felt they’d done all they could in this one bout, having only made some order in the bedroom and bathroom, not in the living room, but they’d come back another day for that (if Death continued to take a Holiday). Hannah managed a weak thanks as each of the ladies bid her goodbye. Out in the hallway again, covered with a clammy sense of dread and sweat, the quartet swore to each other they’d get rid of stuff in their own apartments.

“I don’t want anyone to have to do that for me!” Tillie vowed.

“Sad, sad,” Nora shook her head.

Molly, who tended to be grumpy, said, “You’d think she’d of straightened up a bit before we came.”

Shiko thanked them extravagantly as though the favor had been done for her.

"Oh, no!"

2007-11-12T08:38:00.000-08:00

Tillie, who is Peggy’s confidante more than Nora, tells everything to Nora about Peggy’s budding romance with Cass. He’s kissed her several times now and Tillie reports Peggy said they were “good kisses.” Next, she said Peggy had come down early to talk about “breast reconstruction.”

Nora rolled her eyes. “Oh, no—“

“Oh, yes,” Tillie said. She quoted Peggy: “It might bother Cass.” Obviously meaning her one breast removal and what must be scarring.

Nora said, “Don’t tell me she wants implants!”

Tillie considered this a moment, sticking her tongue out, something she does frequently because of motor damage, apparently, left by her stroke. She may not be aware her tongue is out when it is. “Oh, I think she means more ‘reconstruction.’”

“But she’s 78 years old,” Nora said, in exasperation. “What can she be thinking of? Just because Cass gives her a kiss or two doesn’t mean he wants to go to bed with her.”

“He probably can’t even get it up,” Tillie added. “But why not for Heaven’s sakes?” Tillie meant why couldn’t they go to bed together.

“Because,” Nora said. “Because of just that. Heaven’s sakes.”

Tillie said “uff,” shook her head. “You’re such a bluenose.”

Nora went over to stand by her kitchen window to contemplate this new bit of gossip about Peggy and Cass. What could Cass possibly see in Peggy? Those pale blue eyes and the way she touched people when she talked to them, smiling up into their faces, in an effort to enlist them in whatever inane thing she was saying. The woman had not a deep thought in her brain. Of course, Nora realized her scorn was brought on by a touch of pique. Cass prefer Peggy to her? She had thought the tiniest thought that Cass could not be unaware of the fact that she, Nora, kind of had a slight feeling for him, which was true, she did. The old bald-headed Mafia Don! But he apparently was as obtuse as the object of his apparent affections, Peggy. And here she, Nora, that is, had kind of entertained the idea he was with Peggy to make her, Nora, jealous. She turned to Tillie. “Guess what I just made. Chocolate pudding.”

“Oooo, I want some,” Tillie said.

“And you shall.” Nora reached into the reefer to draw out one of her prized three cups, all that the pan had yielded.

“Can you spare it?” Tillie asked, and Nora, lying in her teeth said, “Of course.”

She, of course, could not resist sharing anything she made with anyone here because none of them was the cook she was, either out of ineptitude or ennui. But she had to make her disclaimers: “Now, it’s all home-made. You will come upon tiny bits in it that you will wonder at. They’re just little pieces of cooked egg white. Because it’s hard to incorporate eggs into hot pudding.”

Tillie frowned. “Eggs.”

“Yes, eggs. You have to put eggs into pudding to make it thick. Here, I’ll put some whipped cream on it for you.” Nora took the Redi-Whip out. She was down to about a teaspoon in it, she could feel the rattle in the can. But graciously she gave Tillie’s pudding a few squirts. “Enjoy.”

After Tillie left, Nora thought about Peggy and Cass. “Incredabalis!”

Later, Tillie reported she had to spit out the cooked egg pieces and couldn’t she make it without having them in it?

Lunch with old friends

2007-11-11T10:40:00.000-08:00

Friday, Nora went to lunch with three of her old friends, wealthy ladies who just love to come to this “side of town” as though they were slumming. Marge, Allyson, and Joann. Sylvia, apparently, couldn’t make it. They met at a Latin cafe just a block and a half from the Twilight Zone. At the last moment, Nora drove instead of walking because she was running late. She’d gone swimming at the rec center with Sara and Shelta, they’d had coffee at the local Starbucks, and then she had to hop in the shower—which she’d already done at the pool but had to wash her newly-cut-short hair to give it “loft” and style it because the ladies from southeast hadn’t seen her like that before and she wanted to have a good hair day.

But, alas, it was not to be. She put the strong gel on it and then didn’t know what to do. Use a blower? Just fluff it up with her hands? How can you fluff wet, gelatinous hair up? She used the dryer and that was a mistake because it took away any natural impulse her hair would have to curl.

She got to the café, embraced the ladies, and they went to a booth. How nice to see them! Marge looked like she’d come out of that fabled land of eternal youth, Shangri-La, and the weight of centuries, staved off before, had descended upon her. Old! Thick, straight, long white hair like an Indian woman’s whom she closely resembled, one of the great “old ones” whose bones would soon be venerated. But so very nice.

Allyson had become quite a talker and demonstrated this ability, her blue eyes twinkling in her pert face, her voice almost just below the pitch Nora was comfortable with so she had to strain even with her ear-pieces in. Beside her sat Joann of the sharp wit, the youngest of them all.

The food was only moderately good but they complimented N’s choice of a restaurant. After lunch they came back to see her place—Marge had not seen it before; they pronounced it “adorable” and Marge, going in to the kitchen where Nora’s pots of violets sat in bloom on the window sill, said, “What could be dearer?” which Nora had to ask Joann to repeat to her since she didn’t catch all of it.

Her heart softened toward her old friends whose amalgamated wealth could easily buy the structure she lived in. But why think such thoughts? She had known these women for over fifty years when she’d “married into wealth and society.” She showed them around a bit downstairs which was peopled by the usual motley group.

A curious thing: when she’d left for lunch, one-legged Ralph was in his chair talking to the strange lady on three, Lucy, who sat in one of the overstuffed chairs wearing as usual her long pale cashmere coat. Ralph was talking earnestly, using his hands, even, at times, the pink stub of his leg, to emphasize some point. And when they returned from lunch, these two were in their same positions and seemingly hadn’t missed a beat of their conversation.

Nora went upstairs and took a nap for about 50 mins, actually falling asleep, lovely, got up, made tea, and decided to go down and visit Tillie carrying her cup. It was now about four and Ralph and Lucy were still in the same place, still talking! Nora went into Tillie’s and they gossiped, mostly about Peggy—Tillie said she thought she and Cass were getting very close to…

“Wow, really!” Nora said. Privately, she thought, “No way.”

She mentioned to Tillie the marathon talk between Ralph and Lucy, and Tillie snorted. “He’s at last found an audience because her mind is so gone all she does is listen, smile and nod.” That could be. Tillie said, “And she’s got her cart with her, always, and never will say what’s in it.”

“Have you asked her?”

“Yes, and she said, ‘Oh, my things.’” In the cart, one of those wire fold-up ones most of the ladies had, were square packages wrapped in plastic grocery sacks.

When Nora went out, several were in the lobby proper, among them Sara, so she went and sat with them. Fred, Jill, and Birdie. Jill asked Nora what her name was, like she always did. Nora teased her. “What is my name?”

Sara said, “Mable?”

Birdie began to tell about taking a walk to the store and “gravity” making her “lean over.” She demonstrated, putting her tiny arms out. She was wearing her striped shirt and from her wafted the aroma of garlic, nice from a stewpot but not a human being.

Sara whispered to Nora, “Scrabble tonight?” Ah, a beacon of sanity in the purple glow of the Twilight Zone.

Nora has mod haircut

2007-11-09T07:56:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, Nora went shopping to the Mart of the Wal to return some pants, intending to zip in and out but she inadvertently saw something she thought she’d just take home and probably return—a white lacy blouse to wear with her black velvet pants. She wore a 12-14 altho she used to be fine in an 8-10 (even tho the Mart’s sizing was generous to accommodate their girth-challenged customers).

Then she went to her real love, the thrift store. It wasn’t a Senior day with half off all the tickets except yellow and green or pink and blue but she went anyway because as she told Sara she enjoyed thrift shopping whenever she was “lonely, bored, or depressed.” (Sara had replied, “If I wasn’t lonely, bored, or depressed before, I would be shopping there.”) Oh, Sara, with her rich tastes. Her favorite store was Cold Water Creek.

Nora made several purchases: a great pair of jeans that had a long rise, a rose-colored tee with a “V” neck from Ann Taylor (with which she would have to wear a camisole to avoid driving the old men crazy), and a fleece zip-front athletic jacket perfect for a run early in the morning when the air was still nippy if she ever did that.

Oh, and the big news of the day. She had her hair cut very short! She took a clipping of a woman from a magazine, an ultra smart woman who wore impossibly skinny jeans with spike heels and looked to be eighty if she was a day, who had platinum-colored hair cut short and tousled like a hay stack after a tornado. She gave the picture to her beauty shop lady, Debra, with the caution, “Can you do a modified cut for me?” Meaning nothing too drastic.

“Sure,” Debra said and proceeded to practically scalp Nora who didn’t have that much hair to begin with. Yikes! Once begun, there was no stopping the mad beautician. “Snip, snip, snip” went her scissors and the hair fell from Nora’s head onto her black smock like dove’s feathers. She was afraid to look in the mirror. Debra then applied an industrial-strength gel to “hold it” and with a blow-dryer and her fingers proceeded to make Nora look like the woman in the picture only more so. Wow was all Nora could think. Well, she still had that wig she’d gotten at the thrift for Halloween that she could wear until this all grew out in about two years…

“There,” Debra said. “What do you think?”

Words failed her. It did look pretty mod but was it her, eighty-year-old her? “I like it,” she said in a small, weak voice. One must never upset one’s hair dresser.

Nora returned to the Twilight Zone, hoping to sneak in except she had to get her mail, and there were of course folks in the lobby doing the same. Jolene, the sharp lady, spotted her immediately. “Oh, I love it!” she said.

Small Betty was there and said, “You need to make it fluffier on the sides.” How does one do that if there is no fluff to work with?

“Well,” drawled Nora, “I’ll go see what my severest critic thinks,” and she went to Tillie’s door. Tillie was sprawled in her barca lounger as usual and Taco Belle set up her din. Nora went in not saying anything.

Tillie peered at her in the half-light. “Oh, you got your hair cut!”

Well, duh.

“I love it!” she said. She got up and gave Nora a hug.

“You’re just saying that,” Nora said.

“No, I’m not,” Tillie said. “I’d tell you if I didn’t like it.”

Maybe. Nora was feeling a little better about it. She went up to her place and looked in the mirror front and back and sides for about five minutes debating trying on other dangly earrings to get the effect but that was too much trouble. What would classy Sara think? She was gone but called that evening and expressed surprise Nora had had her hair cut. “I liked it the way it was. But I’m sure it’s adorable.” Kind Sara.

The next morning when Nora woke up, quite early, she didn’t look in the mirror. But she felt her head with her hands. Yep, just as she suspected it would do. All the lift it had had was flat now from her sleeping on it. She’d have to wet it and re-gel. Stay sequestered for weeks? Or dig out that dynel wig? And what was coming up? Lunch with her old bridge group. When she wanted to look nice…

Vonnie can't get up

2007-11-07T09:06:00.000-08:00

Vonnie couldn’t get up. She was sitting in the lounge with Tillie, Zora, and Wilma, and she tried to get up but couldn’t. The other women tried to help her but couldn’t pull on her right arm that she’d broken in a fall not very long ago. Vonnie is a big woman, about six feet tall.

So Tillie ran into the office and asked the manager for help. “Is Jose around? We need him!” Jose is the maintenance guy and very nice and smiley most of the time. He was, in fact, in Susan’s office.

“Oh no, no, no,” Susan said. “We can’t help her get up. This is not assisted living. We’ll have to call 911.”

Tillie was indignant. “What are you talking about? We just have to help her get up off the couch.”

“No, no,” Susan kept shaking her head. “Can’t do it. Jose can’t assist like that.”

“For crap’s sake,” Tillie said. “I never heard of such a thing.”

The manager got up and walked from behind her desk. She looked out the door toward where Vonnie was with the others around her. “If she were on the floor, we could treat it as an emergency and then Jose could help her. But not on the couch like she is.”

“Criminy Christmas,” Tillie said, and spun on her heel out the door. No, actually, she can’t move that fast with her bum leg. “We’ll roll her off to the floor, then.”

Of course, they did not do that. Cass and Fred came along and they were able to get Vonnie up and into her room and into her bed. Where she is left for now. She’ll be going soon to assisted living, poor dear.
~~~

Moving on. Some strange dishes showed up at the last pot luck brunch. Peggy brought a fruit salad that was made of Cool Whip, dry jello powder, sour cream, and canned fruit. Those at table with her, Tillie, Nora, and Shelta all had to try some. It was pretty yucky. But Shelta ate hers down like she does everything. Peggy later left a margarine tub full of it on Nora’s doorstep. She felt guilty flushing it down the disposal but had to think of her stomach. Also, it is rumored that Effie’s pink cake was made in the following fashion:

She took several leftover pieces of cakes, purchased ones, like from Costco and Safeway, crumbled them all up together, poured a cup of oil over all, reshaped the mixture into cake pans, baked them, then iced them with pink icing upon which she spread sprinkles. Fortunately, Nora had been forewarned by Jolene not to eat any of this.

Oh, one last note. Cass did not come to the potluck yesterday. So Peggy sat at table with the girls. Susan said to fill up plates with the leftovers and take to “your neighbors who didn’t come.”

Nora filled a plate for her next-door one, Clo. (But none of Peggy’ yucky salad.) She knocked on Clo’s door but Clo said she’d pass because the food was too salty and fat. So she walked down the hall to Lucy’s and knocked on her door. But she too shook her head. Beyond her, Nora could see into her apartment. It held not a stick of furniture, no lamps, no pictures on the wall, nada. Passing strange! But, oh, well… To each her own.

Next she knocked on the ancient mariner’s, Archie, but he didn’t answer. So, in indecision, she went to the elevator from which she could see Cass’ door. Well, why not? So she went, a little tremulously, to his. He answered, and for the first time, she saw him without his baseball cap on. He was bald above the fringe of hair but actually didn’t look too bad. His apartment behind him looked fussy in the quick glimpse she had, probably the work of his sisters.

He seemed very pleased. “Well, thank you, how nice of you.” She didn’t tell him he was her fourth choice. “I’ll eat it right now,” he said. He invited her in and she went as far as the kitchen. She had a slight pitter-pat feeling to at last be in his place and see him without his hat on. But she didn’t go in any further nor stay but a moment. But, progress.

N ponders novel

2007-11-06T10:46:00.000-08:00

Nora and Tillie are considering applying for jobs at the new Sunflower Market that’s opened. Both need money and if they could work part-time a couple of days a week or half-days, they’d like that. Perhaps Nora should lie about her age since hers is more than Tillie’s but she is in much better shape than T. She will try to download a form off their web site. Of course, she kind of hates to think of giving up her leisure time because she’s got something going on every day. Monday is swimming and coffee at SB’s, Tuesday is coffee hour, Wednesday is Yoga, Thursday is Communion Service, and Friday is swimming again. But her afternoons are free. Except she’s knocking off the ZZZs for about an hour after lunch. Hmm. She’ll have to think about this. But she could use, say, $200 or $300 extra a month.

She wishes she were outside in the morning to see whose lights are on early. Hers is by five most mornings; she wishes it were at least six. Sara wakes at 4:30 frequently; and of course Tillie keeps crazy hours but all you’d see through her blinds is the pale green light of the TV screen.

Nora has in mind a novel she wants to write. She should’ve started the NaNoWriMo the first of this month, write 50,000 words in 30 days but that’s a little too speedy for her. Here are just some random thoughts about it:

Three old ladies live in a retirement home. They are Nora, Pat, and Winifred. They’ve had the usual hard knocks in their lives and now should be able to take life easy. They do, but sometimes wonder if there is any “more” for them in this world. Something different, exhilarating, crazy even. In their gab sessions in each other’s digs, they’ve expressed wishes that have never been true in their lives. They are fairly modest wishes, not exactly the glamorous ones you’d come up with if you were faced with a genii in a bottle or a fairy grandmother.

Nora, who could never carry a tune, wishes she had a marvelous singing voice, kind of a combo of Streisand and Cline. That kind of sexy, brazen, sweet one.

Pat ever has wished to be a great dancer like Ginger Rogers who could follow every step that Fred Astaire came up with except for maybe the dancing up the walls.

Winifred, whose life was fairly grim, has always wished she had one of those wonderful silver-bells-pealing sort of laugh that comes practically at will, fills all awkward social gaps, smooths all discord, and grapples people to her soul with hoops of steel. But, alas, all she has is a slight chuckle even when she’s “tickled pink.”

Fate, so often unkind, softens up and grants these poor old souls a little fun in their waning days. It comes about of course in a fantastical way: through a fairy, but not the sweet godmother type but an irascible old one named Sebastian. He’s cranky as hell. And he only grants wishes to the three when they wear or have on or in place the “appurtenances” their failing bodies require, namely a hearing aid, strong glasses, and a false tooth bridge. All of these are obtained by the women at a clinic run by the mysterious Dr. Mahoney.

This is just the bare plot beginning. It needs action, dialog, lights, camera…!

Watching football, testy Tillie

2007-11-05T08:36:00.000-08:00

They were watching the Broncos play Sunday afternoon. Peggy and Cass were on the couch facing the TV set, Tillie was on one of the side couches, and Evan was on the other side couch. A table with some guacamole and chips on it Peggy had brought sat in this “U” shape.

Nora came in. “How’s it going?” she asked.

“It just started,” Cass said.

Evan said, “Sit down.”

Peggy glanced up at her with her wavering blue eyes, looking happy to be sitting in her favorite spot by Cass. Tillie craned her head around to look at Nora but didn’t say anything. So Nora went to the couch with Tillie on it. She sat in the middle instead of at the end because the TV was at a right angle to her, and the further away she was on one of its hypotenuses, the less she’d have to crane her neck. “Sorry,” she said to Tillie, “I’ve got to sit so close to you.”

Tillie just nodded. Evan, all alone on his couch, in typical male fashion, stretched out, in his tennis shorts, his legs lean and tanned, putting his feet up and looking quite comfortable.

Cass and Peggy had the best spots, directly before the set—Peggy was always so silly when she was by a man. She sounded like a teenager, saying breathy little things interspersed with giggles. Her favorite thing to do with people but more with men was to reach out and touch them like she was imparting some juicy bit of gossip.

But Nora was inclined to be generous in her thinking.

But how quickly things fall apart, she was to think later.

Bye and bye as they all watched the game unfold—a terrible one, against the Detroit Lions with young QB Jay Coulter getting injured early on—Tillie, beside Nora, got tired of craning her neck. So she got up, took one of the pillows and deposited herself on the floor, alongside the coffee table, with her back resting against the Cass/Peggy couch. She was able then to stretch out her legs.

Nora looked down at her and mock frowned. Umm! Well, okay, she thinks, if that’s what you want to do. And so things progress a little bit longer, Broncs trailing now by twenty or so points, Nora still craning her neck in the couch’s middle position. She thinks, since Tillie has vacated the end spot and I’m the only one on this couch, why don’t I just slide my backside up against the armrest and stretch out my legs, too? Which she does.

“Oh,” she says, looking down at the recumbent Tillie, “you can have your place back if you want it.” Silence for a minute or two while something exciting is happening on the tube.

Then Tillie says, all indignant, “Are you going to stretch out?”

“I might as well,” Nora replies.

“Okay, I’m leaving,” Tillie says, with high dudgeon in her voice.

Nora says, “Don’t leave, you can have your place back.”

But the damage apparently is done.

Tillie stalks out of the common room, plying that one stiff leg in an aggrieved manner. Evan seems to notice in his quiet, passive way, Cass and Peggy are still twittering to each other, but Nora, now herself feeling a bit of spleen, takes her length on the couch, in a semi-prone position. How silly is this? She is stung by Tillie’s sting. How childish of Tillie, really. Nobody said she had to get down on the floor. What was Nora to do, just stay in the middle position uncomfortably, all on the couch by herself? So she stayed and watched until almost the end of the game, when she got up and left, telling the others she wanted to bake something for dinner.

She went up and made a small cherry pie with some dough scraps she had in the freezer and one can of cherries. All the while she thought about what had happened, a moderate quake on the seismic register in the Twilight Zone, whose aftershocks would linger. She knew Tillie was steamed, about which she had several thoughts. Senility was one answer, but then she used that too often about her fellow residents. Trailer trash was another, but that seemed too harsh. She’s too high-maintenance, she decided. She knew that Tillie would be cool to her for days. And you know what, she told herself, I don’t care.

And she took out her well-worn yardstick. Such an imbroglio would never have happened among her old country-club friends. They were much too polite and well-bred, the very qualities in them she had come to scorn.

She enjoyed her dinner and the cherry pie which she ate with a dollop of vanilla ice cream, and she half-watched TV and half-read the huge Sunday paper. At last, in bed, she still thought about what had happened, shaking her head figuratively at its silliness, but still feeling miffed about it. She decided there was something to be said about the decorum and reserve of her former friends.

Tamales

2007-11-01T16:26:00.000-07:00

Tillie knocked on Nora’s door. “He’s here, with the tamales,” she said.

Nora had nooo idee.

“C’mon,” the impatient one cried, “they’re $10 a dozen.”

“I can’t eat a dozen tamales,” Nora said, hastily taking her key on its elastic thingy hung on a hook beside the door, and her billfold.

Tillie gave her one of her looks. “You can freeze ‘em.” She had already started marching down the hall and Nora hurried to keep up with her.

“How about a half dozen?” she asked, “and where are they from? That tamale factory on forty-fourth, what’s it called, ‘La Casita’ or something?”

“I don’t knooow,” Tillie lamented, as if all the demons in the walls of the Twilight Zone had descended upon her. “I’m going to ask Crabby Molly if she wants some, too.”

“I’ll split a dozen with her,” Nora said. “Oh, how about Shelta? She’ll eat anything.”

“Yes, good idee, let’s stop at her door, too,” Tillie said. So they did but Shelta didn’t answer but there she was in the hall, getting off the elevator. They quickly apprised her of her opportunity to buy into the “tamale venture.” Shelta agreed to take a half-dozen of Nora’s. Mary was also enlisted, and grasping her walker and affixing her oxygen nosepiece, she joined the trio marching down the hall and into the elevator to catch up with the tamale man before all the other denizens of the ‘Zone took his goods off his hands.

Nora, ever curious, was attempting to assay from Tillie—a kind of hopeless task—how this all came about, for it wasn’t exactly a daily occurrence that a gross or so of tamales showed up at their place.

Tillie shot the words out of the side of her mouth as they hurried. “He’s Zora’s son, he must work there or something. She gave me one last week and I asked her if we could get some…”

Now they’d reached the lobby. “Why don’t I ask Small Betty?” Nora suggested. She always liked to eat something exotic and hated to cook. So Nora ambled down the hall at just the moment the tamale man entered the front door; she looked back and saw him.

Small Betty had a visitor, a fellow she had used to work with at the Assistance League. He was fixing lunch for her.

“Tamales, tamales, want some hot, fresh tamales?” Nora chanted. “Give ‘em to your daughters, give ‘em to your sons…” (She obviously was getting mixed up with hot cross buns.)

Small Betty said, “Sure, I’ll take a dozen” and produced a ten-spot. So Nora returned with that in time to claim her share of the booty. She had never really eaten authentic tamales before, only the pallid kind out of cans. These were mean looking suckers, wrapped in dark husks and almost incarnadine in their deep-hued color, sweating orange grease.

Her stomach quailed a little but now she’d have to eat them because she never wasted anything. Fortunately, later that afternoon, Jolene stopped by in hopes Nora had some cold beer, which she did. Jolene had been shopping at the ARC and had a big sack full of clothes. She quaffed down two Corona ponies while Nora was still sipping one. She showed off her “new” duds, and Nora pressed upon her two of her tamales.

She ate two for dinner with some home-made guacamole and they were passing good. (Also, no doubt, good for passing…er, gas.) However, she didn’t think she’d get them again even if Tillie became the tamale inside woman. They were a bit too indigenous for her tastes.

A Mystery

2007-10-31T17:50:00.000-07:00

Tillie came to report that someone left something on the carpet in the lobby by the mailbox.

“What?” Nora asked.

“A pile of dog shit. And Susan had to clean it up.”

“Ewww, who would do that?”

“I think it’s that new man, Jock, who has the Corgis,” Tillie said.

“Well, he won’t last long here,” Nora said. “What will they do, have it analyzed for doggie DNA?” Tillie cackled. “Sure it wasn’t Taco Belle?”

Tillie gave her a look. “Hers are like little cocktail sausages. This was a big pile of…”

“Never mind,” Nora said. “Spare me the details.”

Then, there was another incident. Around three o’clock, Tillie rang Nora’s doorbell; she must’ve forgotten to put her nap sign out. But, no, there it was on the door. Nora was frowsy from having conked out for a change.

“Didn’t you see my sign?” she asked irritably.

Tillie barged in, not answering the question. “More dog poop,” she announced.

“What? Give me a break,” Nora whined. She needed her restorative tea, and put the kettle on. “Want some?”

“No. Yes.”

She put more water in the kettle. “How come you rang when I had my…”

“More dog poop,” Tillie said in a sepulcher-like voice.

“I’m not sure I need to know this,” Nora said. “Where? When?”

“Upstairs. On the second floor, by the elevator.”

“Yech, how gross. Did you see it?”

“No, Crabby Mary told me. And Susan had to clean it up again.”

The kettle boiled and Nora made tea, using just one of those uber-strong teabags from the mart of the Wal. They went into the living room and sat down. “I bet she was fit to be tied.”

“Mary?”

“Well, her, too, but Susan.”

Tillie nodded.

“Jock and his dogs will be out,” Nora said.

Tillie said nothing, so deep in thought appeared she.

“What?” Nora said.

“I have to go tell Jolene,” Tillie said, putting her cup down.

“She probably already knows,” Nora said, implying because Jolene had a pipeline into everything that went on.

Tillie left, leaving her tea. She’d only been there about four minutes and disturbed Nora’s nap. Oh…well…

Later that evening her phone rang. It was Jolene.

“Sweetie,” she said, “I just wanted to tell you that Mary didn’t find the new pile of dog poop, it was Jewel.”

“Oh,” Nora said, wondering what the big deal about this was.

Jolene proceeded to tell her. “And you know Jewel is half-blind.”

“Do you think so?” Nora asked. “She always greets me by name.”

But Jolene sailed on. “And Sweetie, it wasn’t dog poop on the second floor by the elevator, it was a dried leaf.”

“Oh,” Nora said. “Well, that’s a relief.”

“Just thought I’d set you straight,” Jolene said.

“Well, it wasn’t me that—“

“Isn’t that funny?” Jolene said.

“Yeah, really,” Nora agreed.

Eyes Wide Shut

2007-10-30T05:11:00.000-07:00

Nora went swimming yesterday with three other women at a rec center pool. She just about had her eyes put out in the locker room by the nakedness of almost every old gal there except herself. Yikes! she kept thinking. A naked old woman is not a pretty sight.

The three whom she went with—her new friend, Sara, Shelta, and Jill—were also nudists. But she and a couple of other Modest Millies went into the private stalls instead of the group showers to rinse off the chlorine water after swimming. Nora saw them when they came out into the communal dressing area: big saggy boobies or little shrunken ones, pendulous thighs or prune-wrinkled ones, jiggling butts, hysterectomy scars that the tug of the years had distorted; and above all this, their calm, good-natured faces, with glasses on, grey hair, the kinds of faces one saw in church, around luncheon tables in department store tea rooms, and wheeling grandchildren in the park. But now, forever morphed into these other visions imprinted onto Nora’s overly modest brain.

When she got back to her apartment she summoned up her nerve to look at herself naked in the full-length mirror, even using a hand mirror to see her rear scape. Well, she had to change her clothes anyway. She had never really surveyed herself like that before.

For an 80-year old woman, she didn’t look too bad. The skin on her breasts, back, and arms was smooth and firm. She had no “wattles” on her upper arms, those distressing flaps of extra flesh that jiggle. But below the waist, her scar was very unattractive. It ran from her navel into her public hair, with small hillocks of her belly on either side of it. Her pudendum was sparser than gorse grass on a sandy beach, and some of it grey.

But, the rear view! Yikes again! Her butt had dimples on their lower hemispheres! It dawned on her that this was what was called cellulite. It had snuck on and she’d been unaware. Damn! This was not a derriere she ever wanted to show off to anyone, even tho, on the whole, her figure was a damn sight better than any of the others she’d seen this day.

So, she would continue to be modest and go into the private shower stalls when again they went swimming. And if anyone said anything to her, like, “Do you have a problem being naked?” she’d say, with a little chuckle, “I was scared once in gym class by a 200-lb girl wrestler.”

But, of course, no one would say anything to her. And she thought, as she usually did, of her old yardstick: her birthday club and book club and bridge club friends in her old life, and what they’d do in the women’s dressing room at the rec center. She bet not a one of them would be naked except maybe Allyson who in her later years had exhibited a surprising streak of derring-do.

But to imagine the others butt-naked was utterly impossible. So this thought led to the inevitable conclusion: the peons of the world blithely shucked their clothes. Whereas the hoi polloi were too uptight.

Then she thought, but whom am I?