“Have you seen the snow out there?” He shuffled to the window, pulling open a gap in the slats of the blinds. “I need to get home and shovel the walks, and these people won’t let me.”
“Your son is shoveling the walks,” I assured him, though it wasn’t true. His family had sold his old house to help pay for Merrill’s care—augmented secretly by my own payments. It was the least I could do. But I’d learned over the years that any talk of selling his house worried him, even more than not knowing where his house was; there was a link somewhere, buried in his mind, that tied him to the idea of his home more strongly than to the home itself. It was the work, I think, not the bricks or the mortar, but the effort he’d put into maintaining them. As long as he thought someone was taking care of it, he’d eventually forget about the whole thing. Until another snowstorm brought the memory gasping to the surface.
I sat down, hoping the sight of me relaxing would help him to relax as well. “How have you been, Merrill?”
“They won’t tell me anything in here, and they won’t let me leave.” He looked at me with a mix of suspicion and embarrassment. “Did you say you’re my son?”
“I’m your friend, Merrill. My name’s Elijah.”
“Then who’s my son?”
“Your son is named David.”
“And he’s taking care of my house?” He could get so fixated on things.
“Of course he is. Have a seat, Merrill. Tell me about your day.”
He looked at the door and whispered loudly, “Do you think you could get me out of here?”
I sighed, but nodded. “Not out of the building, Merrill, you know that, but I can take you for a walk around the halls.”
“I don’t want to walk around the halls,” he said bitterly. “I don’t even know what this place is.”
“You live here.” I stood up. “Let’s go for a walk.”
“And good riddance.” He started fumbling with his jacket—not a heavy coat, like he’d need outside; I didn’t even think he had one. I took the light jacket from him and draped it over my arm.
“Let me hold that for you.” I opened the door and closed it again behind him as he shuffled out into the hall.
“I hate this place,” he said, brushing past the red vase on his hallway shelf. He looked at me with a sudden twinkle in his eye, as if the simple act of passing through the door had changed his mood. “Too many old people.” He chuckled, and I laughed with him. We walked down the hall, slowly but smoothly, and waited at the elevator. “Where are we going again?”
“Just down to the lobby for a walk around the halls.”
“You should have left your coat in my room,” he said, pointing at his jacket on my arm.
“I don’t mind carrying it.”
The foyer was busy, at least for this place. A handful of families sat here and there on couches and chairs, chatting with their mothers and grandmothers, old men and women in wheelchairs and walkers, with oxygen tanks, plastic cannulas draped over ears and faces like translucent alien jewelry. Merrill’s face brightened when he saw the foyer, and that recognition was as sad to me, in its way, as the confusion he’d had in his room—not because I didn’t want him to be happy, but because of the speed with which he moved from one emotion to the other. He hated this place, and he wanted to get out, and after one door and one hall and one elevator, he’d forgotten it all. He was here in a place that he recognized, and it didn’t matter that he hated it because that glimmer of recognition overshadowed every other emotion. Here was something he remembered, somewhere he’d been before, and just like that, he was happy. He smiled and waved to someone he’d probably never met, and I walked behind him with the jacket he’d forgotten.
“Does this place have a restroom?” he asked, and I pointed him toward a door in the wall. He shuffled in, and I sat down to wait. A young man was sitting on the couch across from me, someone I thought I recognized, but I couldn’t be sure. Thin, maybe seventeen years old, with a ragged mop of dark black hair. He was alone, with a dead, emotionless expression, and I remembered Rosie’s concern for others, the way she’d sought me out in the grocery store, and I leaned forward.
“Here for a grandparent?” I asked.
He looked at me, his face unreadable. “Kind of.”
“Kind of a grandfather, or kind of a grandmother?”
“Friend of a friend.”
I nodded. “I suppose you could say the same for me.”