The Oxford Home for the Aged had once had aspirations. Anyone could see this from the tall fake plants and the columns and the pictures on the walls of mountain vistas—even from the name itself, which had no relationship to the institution of higher learning; someone had thought it sounded good. But somewhere along the line, something had gone terribly wrong. The linoleum floors were violently patterned by scuff marks from too many wheelchairs and stretchers and canes; the lobby smelled only a little like Lysol and the cigarettes the security guard smoked and a lot like the stale, slightly rank skin of the very old and the very sick. The ceiling directly above the elevator bank hung in strips from water damage, which had gone unrepaired for so long that the wound itself had turned black, like a skinned knee gone gangrenous.
A question of care, Denise thought. No one cared, so nothing happened. The management had changed so many times no one was sure who or where the current owner was, and the patients weren’t with it enough to complain, and there weren’t many family members that made it out there, though it was only fifteen miles from town. A vicious cycle: the place was so depressing that no one wanted to come, and because no one came and complained, the place got even more depressing. At another point in her life Denise would have taken it upon herself to get the place cleaned up, to start by talking to the janitors about what sort of cleaning solution they were using, if any, but she had no interest these days in taking on responsibilities that weren’t hers.
She did her part; she kept a pleasant expression on her face and did her job the best she could despite the absolute storm of shit that sometimes came down on her (she didn’t like to swear but some situations called for it). She kept on going despite the rotting ceiling and the rampant understaffing that left patients unobserved, sometimes for hours at a time, and the way the storeroom always seemed out of Dilaudid and morphine when it was needed the most. She was grateful for the job, grateful for the salary and that it took so much of her body and her attention and engaged so little of her actual mind. And yet: lately she was feeling her mind going off on its own a bit more than she was comfortable with. For instance, Mr. Costello, who was dying of lung cancer. Why did she ask him if he was scared? Where had that question come from?
Maybe his equanimity had gotten to her. He had tubes going through his nose to an oxygen tank right by his bed, couldn’t eat much more than ice chips and scrambled eggs, slept fitfully most of the day, and yet his sleepy green eyes, overseeing the disintegration of his own body, seemed amused; content, even.
“So how’m I doing?”
She was checking the oxygen. “Still going strong.”
“Damn. I was hoping to be dead by now.”
“Come, now.”
“You think I’m lying, but I’m not.”
“You’re not scared?” The words had blurted out of her before she even knew what she was saying.
“Naw. I’m the last of the Mohicans, you know. They’ve all gone.” He waved a hand, as if his wife and friends had just now vacated the room.
“That’s good, then,” she’d said, adding, “I mean, that you’re not scared.”
He’d looked at her curiously. He was a smart old man. Had once been something—a chemist? An engineer? “Now why would I be scared?”
She smiled. “I didn’t realize you were a believer, Mr. Costello.”
“Oh, no, no, I’m not.”
“But—you think there’s something else. After this?”
“Not really. I think this is probably it.”
“I see. All right.” She could feel herself sweating. “And that doesn’t—bother you? You don’t find the thought of it unpleasant?”
“You trying to convert me now? Or the other way round?”
She wasn’t sure what “the other way round” meant, exactly, but she didn’t like it. “I’m sorry to intrude,” she’d murmured, focusing again on the oxygen tank. It was half empty.
“You know what’s really unpleasant, Mrs. Crawford? These tubes in my nostrils. They’re goddamn aggravating. You think you can take ’em out for me?”
“You know I can’t do that.”
He smiled up at her stubbornly. “Why not, though? What difference does it make?”
“A little Vaseline might help.”
“No, no. Don’t bother.”
He looked at his hands. His skin was fragile, she thought, like the kind of onionskin paper used in letters from overseas. She wondered if they still used it, if anyone even wrote those kinds of letters anymore. Probably people just e-mailed now. The only letters like that she’d ever gotten were from Henry, long ago. Those slim blue envelopes coming all the way from Luxembourg and Manchester and Munich to her little Millerton, Ohio, mailbox, the way she’d stand in the driveway, feeling them pulsing with heat in her hand. She’d spent long hours poring over the scrawl of his careless blue ink on the delicate surface, trying to make out the words, lingering on the tender throwaway lines—& wishing you were here to hear it. This was in their very early days, before she and Henry were married, when she was assistant teaching and he was playing the Dayton clubs and touring.
Now this is what I mean, she thought to herself. Why think about that now? What was wrong with her?
“My whole life, I thought, you die and you’re kaput,” Mr. Costello was saying. “You’re done and you’re done. Now, to be honest with you, I’m not always sure. I don’t believe in God or anything. Don’t get me wrong. I just don’t have too bad a feeling about it, I guess.”
“Glad to hear it,” she said. She was still fussing with the oxygen cylinder. It didn’t need to be replaced yet, she decided. Maybe it would outlast him.