“What do you know, child?” Joan of Old says. “ ‘Life always gets harder toward the summit—the cold increases, responsibility increases.’ Also Nietzsche. You haven’t even begun to feel pain, young woman, but you will. You will feel pain. Life is hell, and your life has only just begun.”
Joan sorta stares at me through her pink wrinkly eyelids, and suddenly, this old Nietzsche-quoting woman chills my bones. Maybe she’s right. Maybe there is nothing but pain in my future. Endless pain and then you die. Can this be what’s true?
The room is dead quiet, and I haven’t got a joke left in my head. I feel that this might be the end, that I am about to be defeated by Joan of Old for the first time, and that hope is going to die shortly in the Methodist Retirement Home along with everything and everyone else.
But then I remember that I have God on my side, so I pray silently.
Come on, JC. Just one little joke. Let me keep hope alive for these old people who are all about to die. Let me give them a little hope—enough so that they can keep on believing until they croak.
And then I have it!
I walk over to Joan, say, “That’s okay. Be as pessimistic as you want, JOO. I’ll still love you anyway,” and give her a big sloppy kiss on the cheek. Joan’s mouth opens wide in this very dramatic way, and then I know I have her. Everyone howls with laughter. “You cute little old wrinkly incredibly depressing kook—I love ya!” I give her another big sloppy kiss on the other cheek, and then Joan is blushing, and—
“She smiles!” Thompson says. “Joan of Old smiled for the briefest of seconds. Do we have a witness?”
Half of the old people in the room yell “Aye!”
“That’s my girl!” Old Man Linder says as he lifts my left hand into the air, proclaiming me victorious once again.
“Amber Appleton is the winner and your undisputed champion!”
The old people who can stand do, and all of them begin to congratulate me, which quickly yields to stories of grandchildren who never visit—these tales are accompanied by endless wallet-fold pictures that show the grandchildren at various stages of their lives and are presented (usually) in chronological order, one picture per each year the child has attended school—talk about the cost of grocery items fifty years ago, the weather over the last eight odd decades or so, homemade arthritis remedies, the inadequacy of social security checks, who died this week, and, of course, recapping the trickier jigsaw puzzles recently assembled.
Before we leave the community room, Bobby Big Boy visits the lap of almost every old person in the building, and they all smile as they pat BBB’s head and scratch his belly. My dog is great with old people—so gentle, so calm—it’s like he actually knows that old people are brittle and fragile and about to die.
Just before I bust out of the old folks home, I walk over to the far corner where Joan of Old is sitting all alone facing a wall, which she thinks is a window.
“Joan?” I say.
“What do you want, Ms. Hopeful? Come to gloat? Come to rub it in?”
“Do you want to pet my dog before I go?”
“That filthy beast? Ha!”
“You almost made me cry back there. That bit about no boys liking me. That really cut to the quick, as you old people like to say. You couldn’t see it—because you are blind—but my bottom lip was quivering. True.”
“Truthfully?”
“Yeah. It was a close call. I felt the tears coming.”
“You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”
“I’ll probably cry about it later tonight, when I’m all alone.”
“You don’t have to say that,” Joan of Old says, “but thank you.”
“You really are pretty mean and depressing, JOO.”
“Well, I try. And I really hate to admit it,” Joan of Old says, “but you’re pretty hopeful and funny, Amber Appleton. But that kiss was a cheap trick, and I’m going to protest the battle, just so you know.”
I catch her smiling again, but I don’t call her on it.
The smile vanishes like a flame in the wind, and Joan of Old says in this very sad voice, “Do you know that you are the only person who has ever made me smile since my Lawrence died back in ’82?”
This is depressing news, even though I realize it is a weird sorta compliment.
I sigh. “I wish you were the only person who ever made me feel like crying, but I can’t give you that honor, Joan of Old. Sorry.”
“ ‘Simply by being compelled to keep constantly on his guard, a man may grow so weak as to be unable any longer to defend himself.’ That goes for women like us too. Remember that, Amber. Remember that.”
“Nietzsche?”
Joan of Old nods once and then says, “I hope I don’t die before I make you cry, Amber. I’m going to beat your young little hopeful butt one of these days.”
“May we have many more battles,” I say, and then go collect BBB from the lap of Agnes the Plant Talker. Agnes talks to any old plant and pretends it’s her son, who lives in California and never visits.
As I put on my jackets, Old Man Linder gives me one more shoulder squeeze and says, “You were brilliant up there, kid. You keep us feeling young with your youthful ha-has and your skylarking.”