She pops a disposable cone on a thermometer and sticks it in my ear. I get poked and prodded like this every morning. I’m like a piece of meat unearthed from the back of the fridge, suspect until proven otherwise.
After the thermometer beeps, the nurse flicks the cone into the waste-basket and writes something on my chart. Then she pulls the blood pressure cuff from the wall.
“So, do you want to have breakfast in the dining room this morning, or would you like me to bring you something here?” she asks, wrapping the cuff around my arm and inflating it.
“I don’t want breakfast.”
“Come now, Mr. Jankowski,” she says, pressing a stethoscope to the inside of my elbow and watching the gauge. “You’ve got to keep your strength up.”
I try to catch sight of her name tag. “What for? So I can run a marathon?”
“So you don’t catch something and miss the circus,” she says. After the cuff deflates, she removes the apparatus from my arm and hangs it back on the wall.
Finally! I can see her name.
“I’ll have it in here then, Rosemary,” I say, thereby proving that I remembered her name. Keeping up the appearance of having all your marbles is hard work but important. Anyway, I’m not really addled. I just have more facts to keep track of than other people.
“I do declare you’re as strong as a horse,” she says, writing one last thing down before flipping my chart shut. “If you keep your weight up, I’ll bet you could go on another ten years.”
“Swell,” I say.
WHEN ROSEMARY COMES to park me in the hallway, I ask her to take me to the window so I can watch the goings-on at the park.
It’s a beautiful day, with the sun streaming down between puffy clouds. Just as well—I remember all too well what it’s like to work on a circus lot when the weather is foul. Not that the work is anything like what it used to be. I wonder if they’re even called roustabouts any more. And sleeping quarters sure have improved—just look at those RVs. Some of them even have portable satellite dishes attached to them.
Shortly after lunch, I spot the first nursing home resident being wheeled up the street by relatives. Ten minutes later there’s a veritable wagon train. There’s Ruthie—oh, and Nellie Compton, too, but what’s the point? She’s a turnip, she won’t remember a thing. And there’s Doris—that must be her Randall she’s always talking about. And there’s that bastard McGuinty. Oh yes, cock-of-the-walk, with his family surrounding him and a plaid blanket spread over his knees. Spouting elephant stories, no doubt.
There’s a line of glorious Percherons behind the big top, every one of them gleaming white. Maybe they’re for vaulting? Horses in vaulting acts are always white so that the powdered rosin that makes the performer’s feet stick to their backs won’t show.
Even if it is a liberty act, there’s no reason to think it could hold a candle to Marlena’s. There’s nothing and no one who could compare to Marlena.
I look for an elephant, with equal parts dread and disappointment.
THE WAGON TRAIN RETURNS later in the afternoon with balloons tied to their chairs and silly hats on their heads. Some even hold bags of cotton candy in their laps—bags! For all they know, the floss could be a week old. In my day it was fresh, spun from a drum onto a paper cone.
At five o’clock, a slim nurse with a horse face comes to the end of the hall. “Are you ready for your dinner, Mr. Jankowski?” she says, kicking off my brakes and spinning me around.
“Hrrmph,” I say, cranky that she didn’t wait for an answer.
When we get to the dining room, she steers me toward my usual table.
“No, wait!” I say. “I don’t want to sit there tonight.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Jankowski,” she says. “I’m sure Mr. McGuinty has forgiven you for last night.”
“Yeah, well, I haven’t forgiven him. I want to sit over there,” I say, pointing at another table.
“But there’s nobody at that table,” she says.
“Exactly.”
“Oh, Mr. Jankowski. Why don’t you just let me—”
“Just put me where I asked you to, damn it.”
My chair stops and there is dead silence from behind it. After a few seconds we start moving again. The nurse parks me at my chosen table and leaves. When she returns to plunk a plate down in front of me, her lips are pursed primly.
The main difficulty with sitting at a table by yourself is that there’s nothing to distract you from hearing other people’s conversations. I’m not eavesdropping; I just can’t help hearing it. Most of them are talking about the circus, and that’s okay. What’s not okay is Old Fart McGuinty sitting at my regular table, with my lady friends, and holding court like King Arthur. And that’s not all—apparently he told someone who worked for the circus that he used to carry water for the elephants, and they upgraded his ticket to a ringside seat! Incredible! And there he sits, yammering on and on about the special treatment he received while Hazel, Doris, and Norma stare adoringly.
I can stand it no longer. I look down at my plate. Stewed something under pale gravy with a side of pockmarked Jell-O.