Russ and Karen
were over Sunday for the Covenant Woods’ Christmas party. It was a nice affair,
with lots of food and drink, carolers, Santa and even a horse-drawn carriage.
The carolers looked as if they’d just wondered in from 19th Century London. And
for a while, they labored under the misdirection of maestro William.
I was out front waiting for Russ and Karen
when the carolers gathered across the drive from the main door and began
singing the music of the season. The area was crowed with people wanting to
listen and others waiting for a ride in the carriage. And in front of them all
was the somewhat more than slightly inebriated William, gleefully singing and
waving his hands as though conducting. He looked like a kid at a parade.
A few minutes later, Russ and Karen walked
up the driveway. We went inside, spotted a table in a corner of the crowded
dining room and settled ourselves. We were joined by Margaret, Grey, their son,
Craig, and nephew, Bill. Grey has Alzheimer’s and sat quietly. The others were
jovial and bantered good naturedly all evening.
“Did I ever tell you about Matilda?” Bill
asked his aunt. “I really, really don’t like the name Matilda. I was dating
this girl. Her name was Sue, and we were getting along pretty good. But one
day, she complained about her driver’s license picture. ‘Let me see it,’ I
said. She did. It turned out Sue was her middle name. Her first name was
Matilda. I couldn’t date a woman named Matilda. I never saw her again.”
I’m not sure Bill was being completely
honest. He didn’t seem the type to unceremoniously dump someone. But his tale
wasn’t the only one of sniper warfare between the sexes. Joe, who is a retired
New York City transit dispatcher, dropped by to say “hello” and tell a story of
his own. It seems there was a bus driver who, as he was navigating the mean
streets, spotted an attractive young lady in a car. They kept passing each
other in traffic, and the bus driver was determined to meet the woman. But how?
When she stopped for a traffic light, he saw his chance. He pulled up behind
her and nudged her car with his bus.
He did it gently enough that there was no
damage, but the two got out of their vehicles and took a look. Although there
was no police report, the bus driver did make a report to the transit
authority. And the story of the driver using his bus to meet a woman quickly
spread to all corners of the New York transit system.
A few months passed, and the driver was
assigned to work out of the garage where Joe did the dispatching. When the
guy’s records arrived at the garage, Joe’s curiosity got the best of him, and
he took a look to see how the driver had handled the incident with the woman.
“According to the report, the bus was
stopped, and woman ran into him,” Joe said. “I told him, that wasn’t the way I
heard the story. He said, ‘She wouldn’t go out with me. If things had worked
out, I’d have taken the rap.’”
Tuesday morning, Annie called and asked if I
had a few minutes. I did. She wanted some help with Table Talk, the twice
weekly sheet with the schedule of activities and newsy tidbits. I went to the
office and was told the problem was a bit of unsightly white space. Could I
fill it with a short poem?
“Sure,” I said, and sat there with a
now-what-the-heck-do-I-do look on my face for ten minutes.
“Come on, Tom,” Annie said. “Look at all the
decorations around here. You can write something Christmassy. Look at all the
lights.”
Voila! It isn’t memorable, and it’s devoid
of literary merit. But –
Christmas lights everywhere you look,
On every tree and in every nook,
Brightening spirits day and night.
Isn’t it a delightful sight.
filled the space.
My task completed, I went back to the apartment. That afternoon, the phone rang
again. Table Talk needed to be delivered door-to-door, and Elaine, the resident
who normally delivers it, was under the weather. Would I? Sure.
I was just a Table-Talk-delivering machine,
going up and down the hallways. Then, while I was on the third floor of the B
Building, the fire alarm went off. My first thought: how fortunate I am to have
a first-floor apartment. I can’t do steps, and the elevator kicks out the
second the fire alarm comes on. So I waited. A woman came out of her apartment.
“I’m sure there’s nothing wrong,” she said.
“lf there were a problem, someone would be up here telling us what to do. And
if my daughter heard me say that, she’d say, ‘That’s just like you, Mom, always
telling us to look on the bright side.’ And I’d say, ‘Well, goddammit, why
don’t you?’”
After a while, Katherine came along. The
fire alarm didn’t bother her. She was still too angry about the restaurant we
went to on Friday. So, it was a relief when William emerged from the stairway.
“Nobody’s come for us,” Katherine told
William.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “if there’s an
emergency, I’ll make sure you get out.”
I didn’t find that particularly reassuring.
Katherine, however, said that when she fell in her apartment a few weeks ago,
it was William who came by and heard her calling for help. It was a needed
reminder that William’s heart is in the right place, even if his brain is often
where his liver and onions ought to be.
Then Johnny came up the stairs to tell us
the problem – smoke caused by leaking Freon – had been corrected and the guy
was in the process of resetting the elevators. Right on cue, the elevator
dinged, and I was headed for the ground floor. The challenge now was to deliver
Table Talk to the apartments in C Building quickly enough to get to dinner on
time. But Annie and Irene met me en route, and we divvied up the copies. Annie
delivered to the first floor, Irene to the second and I did the third. As I was
getting on the elevator again, the guy from Convalesent Care, the company
through which many of the residents here have gotten their power chairs, came
along. He watched me as I expertly positioned my wheelchair in the car.
“Good job,” he said.
“This elevator isn’t as deep as the one on the
B side,” I said, fishing for an enhanced compliment.
“You’re right,” he said. “This is the one we
use when we want to test people.”
My performance had been less than stellar
when I was in the C Building elevator Saturday, but he didn’t need to know
that.
Beth called yesterday. She has been having a
lot of pregnancy related discomfort – some major headaches – but they seem to
be abating.
“Ken has helped me so much,” she said. “He’s
always there when I need him. He’s not like the other guys I dated. I dated a
bunch of guys that thought they were so tough. Most of them were assholes.
Ken’s not like that at all.”
She made her father proud. And she made him
hope she sees a little of her dad in Hayden’s dad.
Judy, the cleaning lady, brought back
memories of Ash/Craft this morning.
“Good thing you’ve got your window open,”
she said. “I spilled a little Clorox in the bathroom. Can you smell it?”
“Yep.”
“Anybody going by in the hall will know your
room got cleaned today.”
Years ago, in the Ash/Craft employee lounge
– also known as The Dark Room with the Loud People – a colleague frequently
bragged about putting a little bit of Clorox, or Pine-Sol or other
strong-smelling cleaner in the sink and allowing the odor to waft through the
house. And when her husband came home, he was sure she’d been cleaning house
all day long.
It can’t be age; it must be the Clorox
clouding my memory, but I can’t remember who that sly trickster was.
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