Chapter THIRTY-FOUR
The automatic doors whooshed open barely in time for April. She had gotten used to the slightly antiseptic smell months ago, but she w as so excited to get started with what she had planned that she wouldn’t have noticed it in any event.
She turned left and hurried down the wide, carpeted hallways. This was one of the first things she liked about the place, one of the reasons she had argued so hard for it: the light beige carpeting, the spacious halls with paintings in frames, the large dining room to the left with cushioned wood chairs and actual tablecloths on the tables, and the activity room to the right, where people could sit in armchairs near a huge fireplace or around card tables playing cards or board games or whatever.
“Still a nursing home, no matter what you call it,” her mother replied when April said that the place felt more like a hotel than an assisted-living facility. “Carpet’s not going to help him live longer.”
April resisted the urge to say, I’ll remember that when it comes time for me to stick you in one of these places. She had been resisting the urge to say a lot of things these days, now that her mother seemed finally able to get through a day without some subtle reminder of the pain and agony—Yes, that’s the word I mean, young lady, agony—April had “caused” her last summer. April had argued about it with her at first, insisting it hadn’t been that big a deal, that she hadn’t been gone long enough to cause anyone enough stress to raise a zit, much less agony. But one morning she looked up from her cereal and caught her mother, elbows on the table as she sipped her coffee, staring at her. Her mother quickly shifted her eyes and pretended to be looking out the kitchen window. But in that moment, through the wisps of steam that rose up to the lines of her mother’s forehead, April saw something more than agony. She saw a quiet sort of terror.
When April went upstairs, she typed “getting old” at the top of her TITS list. It was the last entry April made on any of her lists. She hardly even thought of them now. When she did, it was usually by accident. She might come across one as she searched for a file or folder on her computer. She might click it open and read it as if she’d come across a picture of her and Heather in seventh grade, mugging for the flashing light in one of those instant photo booths.
Maybe it was that terror that had prevented her mother from punishing her. April assumed she’d be grounded for the rest of high school, but her mother had worked the silent treatment for about a month, never attempting to strike up a casual conversation—a tactic that April had always believed, before the trip, was a guilt-trip tactic her mother used to eventually pry information out of her. But as the first few weeks passed and the only times her mother talked to her was to check on homework or to announce that she was leaving to show a house, April knew that her mother wasn’t just using some ploy. She was probably quiet because she was afraid that if she brought up the subject of the trip, she’d relive feelings she never wanted to experience again. It was kind of like the time April woke up one morning—Nebraska? Wyoming?—and discovered that her grandfather had gotten up, left the room, and taken the car keys with him. He had started the motor and was sitting there, with his hand on the gear shift, as if trying to remember if he’d forgotten anything before driving away. April had talked and waited for her grandfather to remember who he was and who she was. For a few terrifying seconds before she found him she was convinced he’d never come back, as if he’d actually driven off and was now lost in the vast expanse of nothingness that surrounded them. She understood that, sometimes, the greatest fear you can have has nothing to do with your own safety.
And so when, about six weeks after the return to Woodlake, her mother had asked her, after another silent dinner, if April was at all interested in going to see a movie with her, April burst into tears and asked—no, begged—her mother to forgive her. Her mother stood, came around the table, and cradled April’s head against her stomach until April was quiet. They didn’t go to the movies. They sat at the table and talked about what to do with Grandpa.
This is how April knew that the whole process of finding a place for Grandpa to live was so difficult for her mother, even though she sometimes acted—especially when she was on the phone with her brothers, reporting on one or more places she and April had inspected that day—that the whole process was nothing more than another nuisance manufactured by Bill Warrington merely to disrupt everyone’s life.
Clifton House was a perfect, unpretentious name, as far as April was concerned. And the community room really was a community room, the dining room really was a place human beings could eat in without contracting some disease eradicated centuries ago, and it was close enough for April to get to on her bike.
April had insisted on being a part of the call with her uncles once they’d settled on the place. Her mother had purchased and installed, with the help of Hank Johnson, a new “home office” phone line with three-way conferencing capabilities. She and her mother sat next to each other at the makeshift desk in the old sewing room, talking into the phone’s speaker.
“Sounds expensive,” Nick said after Marcy had finished her description of Clifton House. Marcy nodded. No one said anything
“They can’t hear you nod, Mom,” April said, finally. Then, to the speakerphone: “My mom’s nodding, which means she agrees that it’s expensive but she also think it’s worth every penny, especially considering the other dumps we’ve checked out. So she’s just going to have to sell another house or two. Uncle Nick, you’re going to have to write more articles, and Uncle Mike . . . you’re just going to have to get a job.”
For a moment, there was only the hum of the line through the phone speaker.
“Quickly,” April added.
A staticky laugh came through the speaker.
“Just like your mother,” a voice said. April knew it was Uncle Mike, but for a moment she thought someone else had joined the call. And then she remembered hearing those exact words before: the first time she visited her grandfather, and he stood at the front door of his house, holding the door open for her. She had a picture in her mind that he was smiling, but chances were he hadn’t been.
“I’m in,” Uncle Nick said.
“Me, too,” said Uncle Mike.
After a pause and a look at April, Marcy said, “So are we.”
There were more conference calls as her mother and Uncle Nick made the arrangements to move their father—who put up surprisingly little resistance—and sell the house. April often didn’t understand what they were talking about, but she felt it was her duty to be there, just as it was her duty to visit him at least once a week now that he was settled at the home. She usually visited twice, often to share with him a new song she had written for her group, Hidden Agenda. The band—mostly friends of Keith Spinelli’s, who for no reason that April could put her finger on went from hot to not in her estimation—wasn’t very good. And it wasn’t actually her band, but they liked her songs.
She’d been so busy with rehearsals and with the surprise she’d been putting together for her grandfather that she hadn’t found a chance to get to Clifton House for a little over two weeks.
She found him sitting in front of one of the three floor-to-ceiling shelving units that represented the library collection. He had apparently dragged a folding chair from one of the long tables and placed it where he sat, hands folded in his lap, out in the open. He looked like a schoolboy serving detention.
“That you, Clare?” he called out.
April groaned. There were more and more Clare Days these days. It might take her a while to remind him who she was and where they were. She hoped that today, of all days, he wouldn’t be beyond her reach. She knew the day was coming when she’d never get him back.
But, please, god, not today.
“It’s me, Grandpa, April,” she said, walking to him. “Why are you sitting out here in the middle of the room?”
She leaned over and kissed his cheek. She was surprised at its smoothness. And was that aftershave she smelled? She straightened and smiled as she remembered he was expecting someone. Her grandfather did not smile back.
“Who the hell are you?” he asked. “Where’s Clare?”
“Come on, Grandpa. Let’s go sit at the table. I’ve got something to show you.”
She reached for his arm. He recoiled.
“Get the hell away from me,” he said.
April stared at him, her arm still extended to help him stand. This was a first, a rejection of some sort that April couldn’t absorb. She knew this was an off moment for him, that he couldn’t help himself. But after all they’d been through together, after everything she’d done to make sure he ended up in a better place, a place like this, she couldn’t help feeling that he was being intentionally cruel. She forced herself to do what she had seen her mother do: just keep talking as if nothing were different, nothing had changed.
“Two surprises for you today, Grandpa,” she said, her voice quivering at first. “First, check this out.” She dug into her pocket, retrieved her new acquisition, and held it out to him. He looked at it as if he wasn’t sure she wanted him to take it. He eventually did, though, his hands looking to April skinnier, more veined, and shakier than even just a few weeks ago.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“My driver’s license! See? That’s me.” She pointed to the picture, which had actually turned out pretty well, she thought. She didn’t look like a hillbilly or an alien.
“I got it yesterday,” she said as her grandfather silently examined it. “The guy who graded me said it was like I’d been driving for years.” She waited for a response. “I almost said, uh, yeah—like, practically across the country and back. But I didn’t know if there was some sort of statute of limitations on that sort of thing.”
Her grandfather continued to stare at the license, although April had a feeling he wasn’t even trying to figure out what it was. It was like he wasn’t even looking at it.
“Remember when you first started teaching me? And then the accident and the hospital and everything? How you caught hell from Mom?” April waited, growing impatient. “Your daughter, Grandpa. Marcy?”
Her grandfather looked up. April thought she had finally gotten through.
“Where’s Clare?” he asked.
April sighed. She had wanted him in one of his sharper moods. And not just so that he could appreciate her getting her driver’s license, but also because Uncle Mike would be there. If he wasn’t with it for Uncle Mike, why would Uncle Mike bother coming to visit again? She could almost hear her uncle asking that very question. She had gotten to know him much better, through e-mails and text messages, as she planned her grandfather’s eightieth birthday party. When she left a voice mail message on his cell phone about coming to Woodlake, he texted back, asking what a girl about her age would want as a surprise gift. April thought it was cool that he could text, but he was obviously confused about whose party he was being invited to.
GPs bday, not mine, she’d texted in reply.
My dgtr, not u, he texted back.
They started exchanging texts and e-mails as the day drew closer, and April learned that he’d gotten a job somewhere in Chicago selling stuff over the phone—something to do with money was all April understood. While he never came right out and said it, April realized through his questions—What bands are popular with boys today? What kind of store would a girl your age want a gift certificate from?—that her uncle was trying to win his family back. It didn’t sound like it was going too well.
May b just some face-2-face? she suggested.
Cuz AC will rip it off, he replied. Deservedly so.
The “deservedly so” is what made April like her uncle, even after she found out from her mother exactly why Aunt Colleen would want to do him bodily harm.
“Where is she?” her grandfather asked—loudly now. “She’s supposed to be here.”
The library doors opened. A man entered with his back toward April and her grandfather as he pulled a wheelchair in. When he wheeled the chair around, April saw that he was an older man, dressed impeccably in a tie and tweed jacket, with a white handkerchief peeking up out of the front breast pocket of his jacket.
“Well, look here,” he said, his voice deep and friendly. “Bill has a pretty young visitor.”
The woman he began pushing forward was apparently too busy scowling to have heard him. She stared off to her left. She, too, was nicely dressed. April had a feeling the man was responsible for that, although he wasn’t dressed like the other orderlies. Maybe he was a volunteer.
“Hello, young lady.”
April squeaked out a “Hi” as the man wheeled the woman past her. When he reached her grandfather, the gentleman—which was how April was already starting to think of him—turned the chair so that the woman and April’s grandfather were sitting side by side.
“Here we are,” he said, his voice a gentle roll of thunder, like after a storm.
April lost her breath when she saw her grandfather reach over, take the woman’s hand, and hold it between his own.
“Where have you been, Clare?” he asked, in a voice April had never heard. “I’ve been waiting so long.”
The woman’s scowl disappeared. She relaxed visibly, as if shedding a winter coat. She smiled. April thought she was watching some sort of miracle cure, proof of something she might hear on television or the radio, a quick medical tip: The simple act of holding hands can add years to your life, turn sour frowns into glowing smiles, release tension from your back and shoulders, help you feel human again.
April realized that she herself had been transformed for a moment. The gentleman was watching her, a small smile on his lips. He offered a small bow.
“My name is Mitchell,” he said.
She was caught in one of those strange adult situations where she knew she was supposed to say something simple, like—duh!—“I’m April.” But she also knew she was supposed to call the man by his name, but he was too old to call him by his first name. Or was Mitchell his last name? Adults did that, too, sometimes.
Unable to do anything else, she extended her hand. The man smiled, walked to her, and shook it. “Pleased to meet you,” he said.
“Keep your goddamn hands off my granddaughter.”
April saw that her grandfather was still holding hands with the woman. But he was looking at Mitchell as if he might jump out of the wheelchair and attempt a kung fu kick or something.
“Grandpa!”
Mitchell lifted a hand, his index finger slightly extended, as if to calm her. Or maybe he meant to calm her grandfather. In any case, he addressed him. “Just getting acquainted,” he said. “I see you’ve taught your granddaughter her manners.”
“Damn straight,” Bill said, glancing sideways at the woman, as if to make sure she’d heard the compliment. She was still smiling at something off in the distance. April thought she saw a squeeze of the hand.
Mitchell smiled and, with a gentle wave of his own hand, motioned for April to follow him. He pulled back a chair for her near a table by a stack of books. As they settled, April whispered, “I’m sorry. He’s not like that at all.”
“I’m sure he’s not, April,” he said. “Don’t worry.”
April looked up.
“How did you know my name?”
The man smiled. He had perfect white teeth to go along with his perfect clothes and perfect manners. “Your grandfather talks a lot about his children. I imagine one of those children is your mother or father?”
April nodded. “Marcy.”
Mitchell nodded back knowingly. “But his favorite stories seem to be about his granddaughter. Oh, you should hear him: April this and April that. I figured you were her. You sound like quite a young lady. I’m so pleased to meet you.”
“Same here,” April said, wishing she were more polite and polished. “Same here” sounded like she was also pleased to make her own acquaintance. How would she ever get comfortable with this stuff?
“Is it true you told a state trooper to go to hell?” Mitchell asked.
He laughed when April could only shake her head.
“He likes his stories, doesn’t he?”
“Tell me about it,” April said.
“Oh, I enjoy them,” Mitchell said. “Of course, he’s not telling them to me. After a while, if I just sit here quietly, he’ll start talking. It seems to calm him. More importantly, if you’ll forgive me for being selfish . . . they calm my wife.”
His wife? April looked at the woman holding her grandfather’s hand. What was God trying to do to her? She had come in, fully in control of the day, and now it’s just one thing after another knocking her off track. Next thing you knew, Mitchell would reveal that he’s her great-uncle.
April couldn’t think of a thing to say. Her grandfather was whispering to the woman. The woman was smiling, nodding, staring off. April wondered if she understood the words or if she was just responding to something in her grandfather’s voice, something that reminded her of a moment half a century ago or more.
Finally, she spoke up.
“It doesn’t bother you? The two of them . . . you know . . . holding hands?”
Mitchell smiled. “As I said, it seems to calm her. At this point, that’s all that matters.”
April wondered if there was anything she could ever do—would ever do—to match the generosity of this man’s willingness to sit and watch his wife of fifty years holding hands with another man, all but unaware that her real husband was in the room, unaware, perhaps, that he had ever even been her husband. Who could bear it?
“I’m never getting married,” April muttered. She blushed when she realized how that might sound to Mitchell.
But Mitchell only chuckled. “I suppose I felt the same way when I was your age,” he said. “Then I met Clare.”
April took this in calmly.
“Her name is Clare? I thought my grandpa was just confused. I mean, sometimes he even calls me Clare.”
Mitchell smiled and nodded. “I’ve been taking Clare to as many of the group events as possible. I kept hoping that being around other people might bring her back out of her . . . distance. So we went to this crossword party they have each week. Your grandfather heard me say her name. After that, there was no silencing him. He had to be with her.” Mitchell grew quiet for a few moments. “I knew he was confused, but I have to admit that I was ready to punch him in the nose. But then I noticed that Clare was looking up. She was smiling at your grandfather, just the way she’s smiling now.”
April looked over to see that Mitchell was right. Clare was smiling like a girl on a first date. Her grandfather was smiling, too. He had stopped whispering, although April was listening so carefully to Mitchell that she had no idea what story her grandfather might be telling now. Mitchell took the perfectly positioned handkerchief from the pocket of his jacket and dabbed at his forehead. He put the handkerchief back carefully, and folded his large hands together on the table.
“I’m grateful to him,” he said, simply.
April looked at his hands. It was another of those situations where she knew what to do but there simply wasn’t any way to do it without feeling like a doofus. She knew she should reach over and place her hand on top of his, maybe give it a squeeze, and say something profound. If her mother was here—where was she, anyway?—that’s what she would do. Mitchell’s hands themselves seemed to invite this kind of reaction, folded as they were so calmly and peacefully, even though the knobby knuckles and twisted digits and veins embossed against his dark skin warned that the story wasn’t that simple.
They both turned when they heard the doors behind them open. Nick, Mike, April’s mother, and Hank Johnson. Hank was carrying the cake; her mother and uncles each held a box covered in bright happy-birthday wrap.
“What in holy hell?” her mother called out. April saw the line, like a laser, from her mother’s eyeballs to her grandfather’s hand. And Clare’s.
April looked at Mitchell. Mitchell gave her a tight, knowing smile.
“We’re grateful to him, too,” she said.