Love, Me

September 15
Dear Leora,
            They never leave me alone, just barge in. Yesterday this child showed up who said he was a doctor. I do not believe him, anyone can put on a white coat. “What day is this?” he asked. “What year, what city?” Does he think I’m a fool? “Who is the President?” I looked right at him and said, “McKinley, that bastard and I’d have shot him myself if I’d had the chance.” His face got red and he started scratching his clipboard. Another one with a beard showed up. Two of them, Tweedledum and Tweedledim, at the foot of my bed. Beard said, “Okay, Ida, Can you count backwards from 100 by sevens?” “Only in Urdu,” I said and they both ran away.
            When are you coming? You can eat here but why? The food is terrible.
                                                            love, me

            “Me” is my grandmother, Ida. Her letters have followed me my entire life. The telephone, she says, is too fast, it doesn’t give her time to compose her thoughts. As a kid I loved getting Ida’s letters. She taped coins under the envelope flap, working her way from a couple of pennies to Kennedy half dollars.

            Last summer Ida moved to The Milbury, an expensive nursing home. It has a limousine. My mother Del envisioned her mother Ida taking the limo into town for the Senior Music Series. Ida did not cooperate. She is still mad about the Buick. Six years ago, Del sold Ida’s Buick after she saw her driving on a phone book softened by two pillows and still she could hardly see over the steering wheel. “Your mother Delilah,” she told me, “Absconded with my car.”

            Delilah is Del. No nicknames for Ida. I am always Leora though everyone calls me Lee. Ida is 50 years older than me to the day, January 14. She was 25 when she had Del and Del was 25 when she had me. They were hoping I would keep this pattern going. I didn’t.

October 7
Dear Leora,
            There are no men here. Old codgers who schlump around in ugly striped bathrobes and backless slippers, muttering. Not one looks when I come into the dining room even when I wear the silks your mother brought me from China. Why would your mother stick me with a bunch of old ladies? She knows I like men. They like me, too. Five different boys asked me to the Festival Prom. They sent flowers and perfume, and one of them came wooing with a poem he wrote himself. I didn’t go with him, he was too short. I picked Maurice. Such thick curly hair. And those teeth!
            Bring Stephen when you come. He is always so attentive.
                                                            love, me

            Present and past tumble together in Ida’s letters. Stephen and I divorced six months ago. But Ida believes in marriage. Del too. She just married husband number four, Phillip, an international aid worker she met at Kennedy Airport. Del runs we-help-you-help-yourself microloan programs for women. We’re hoping for the best, but Del has rotten taste in men, including my father. He was gone before I could talk.

            Ida met her first and only husband at 19. Sam was 22. She was working for her father, a printer, when he showed up looking for the boss. Instead he found the boss’s daughter, batted his drop-dead eyelashes and married her. Along with Ida, Sam also got a spirit-sapping job that kept him, until he dropped dead 35 years later, simmering with resentment.

            Sam’s appeal for Ida evaporated early, even before he fattened up like a popover in middle age. For years he slept with Stella, his secretary. Every third Tuesday, when Ida was at her board meeting, Sam picked up my mother at school and there, in the front seat, was Stella. Del thinks Ida was secretly grateful. Stella kept Sam occupied so she could dash to her teas and bridge club and volunteer ladies. When Sam died at 57 from a fat-filled heart, Ida did an immediate about-face and became the loyal adoring widow. Dead Sam was everything live Sam never was. Industrious. Responsible. Kind. Handsome. And my favorite, A Real Valentino. This from a woman who installed twin beds in their room after Del was born.

November 9
Dear Leora,
            The nurses are DREADFUL. The one called Bernice must weigh 200 pounds. She smells of disinfectant. I have bruises from her, but where nobody can see, way under my arm. She wraps that huge hand with those dirty fingernails all the way around my arm, digs her thumb in and yanks me up. “If you’re so tired, go sleep in your room, not here in the foyer!” I cannot sleep in that room, the bed has rubber sheets. How dare they! I am in perfect control of myself, not like some of them. But they will not listen. That sheet crackles all night. Like trying to sleep on wax paper.
            Your mother came last week. She brought bald Phillip with her. Also their wedding pictures from Switzerland. Mountains and blonde people in parkas. They gave me a box of chocolates with snowy scenes on them. When are you coming?
                                                            love, me

            Before the Milbury, Del and I took turns with Ida. She refused strangers and Del, whose habit of agreeability left her with no talent for rebellion, didn’t argue. One of us visited twice a week bringing roast chicken or chow mein. We ate at 6:00 and then Ida shooed us out to watch her M*A*S*H reruns. This routine held until Ida sprained her ankle and wrist in a nasty fall. Del consulted Flora, a social worker specializing in obstreperous old people who recommended the Milbury. In a burst of courage, Del signed the papers, naming me Ida’s co-care partner.

November 14
Dear Leora,
            They are ruining my clothes. They are sneaking into my room when I am not here and wearing my clothes. They leave vile perspiration stains all over them. These people are huge and have stretched out everything. I have NOTHING left that isn’t disgusting. Except the blue velvet robe your mother gave me, and I can never take it off or they would ruin that, too. They even come in at night when they think I am sleeping, but I am not sleeping. I am pretending. I can hear them rustling in the dark in my closet. And laughing. It does no good to complain to the management. They just smile and nod, like a convention of village idiots.
            You must bring me more clothes. And a lock. Don’t forget a good strong lock.
                                                            love, me

            It took us months to tell Ida that we gave up her apartment. When Del broke the news, I played enthusiastic sidekick. “I’ve got all your stuff Ida, whatever you want, even that silly musical cigarette box that plays When Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. Name it. I’ll bring it. What do you want?” My grandmother pressed her lips together until they went white and then disappeared altogether. In a voice oozing contempt she said, “Nothing. Not one thing. Get rid of it all. I don’t care. Sell it, give it away. Have a bonfire.”

November 15
Dear Leora,
            That awful Bernice is back. They said she quit, but she is back. I know it is her, I remember. I do. She was washing pots in the kitchen and I saw the same evil expression and meaty hands. She gave me terrible baths. You know how delicate my skin is, she just scrubbed me raw. I complained and complained about her, and then they told me she quit. But she didn’t, she’s back, she’s pretending to be a dishwasher until she can sneak upstairs and attack me. I called out, “Bernice!” I said, and I know she recognized me, but pretended not to. She said, ”You’re not supposed to be in here, are you?” and then she sprayed me with her hose. But nobody believes me. By the time I found somebody to tell I was dry, but she did, she sprayed me, she did.
                                                            love, me

November 22
Mrs. Delilah Tillis
Hotel Meridian
Delhi, India
by fax — 001-7 65-89-00-354
cc: Leora Levant

Dear Mrs. Tillis:
            How nice to speak with you this morning. As I mentioned, I am the psychiatric social worker at Blaine’s Hospital. Your mother was admitted two nights ago with delusional behavior and shortness of breath. Let me assure you that our facilities here are excellent. Ida is in a private room.
            I know this is a very difficult time for you and your daughter. Lee is coming in a few days. Our therapeutic community is carefully modulated and for that reason we schedule family visits carefully. We have found that too much outside distraction can be counterproductive. Lee calls every day but so far Ida hasn’t come to the telephone.
            Your mother’s breathing is somewhat better. She has a bit of bronchial congestion we’re keeping a good eye on. She does remain agitated, however. The day nurse reported that she was refusing some of her meals as well as her medications. I have been trying to talk with her, but no luck so far. She complains of pain in her knees, but this does not seem to impede her mobility. She frequently walks the corridors, talking to other patients. She is very social, your mother! Unfortunately, many of the other patients here are unresponsive, which seems to anger her. She is often reluctant to return to her room, indicating that she cannot sleep in the “crackly” hospital bed. I have had softer sheets put on the bed, and hope that will help.
            I look forward to meeting your daughter, and of course you.
                                                            Sincerely,
                                                            Rosalee Burke, MSW, CNP, CRNA

            I knew Ida would not talk to me on the phone. Her aversion to telephones grew more intense with age. She called me only once, on my 22nd (and her 72nd) birthday. She sang me a warbly “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to me, happy birthday to us, happy birthday to we.” Then she said, “I love you, I have to go now” and hung up. Del told me that she’d probably had her annual sherry. I liked the idea of Ida holding the heavy receiver in one hand and a tiny crystal glass of liqueur in the other. I pictured her perched on that ancient telephone bench in her front hall. She kept its double shelf saturated in lemon wax and the polished grooves carved into the top shelf filled with dangerously sharp pencils. My mother couldn’t believe that I wanted that “hideous” bench when we were clearing out Ida’s apartment. I had to grab it out of the Goodwill man’s hands and stick it in my trunk when Del wasn’t looking.

November 25
Delilah Tillis
Marriot Hotel
Jakarta
by fax –001-79-45-987-112-0

Dear Mom,
            Well, it’s clean and there are all sorts of concerned-looking people running around with clipboards. Ida is definitely difficult. Stubborn and ornery. Every pill is a battle, and she barely touches the food. She says it’s poison. I told her it was fine, and to prove it I took a big bite out of her egg salad sandwich. I told her she was just playing into their hands with that “food is poison” routine. The longer she kept it up the crazier they’d say she was, and the longer she’d be here. She just stuck her tongue out at me.
            She’s got a private room, which is lucky since she spent most of the morning, you won’t believe this, swearing. When Rosalee the social worker came in Ida looked right at her and said, “Fuck you, you bitch.” Then she turned her back and mumbled, “Jackass cunt.” According to Rosalee bad language is common in here. She said it was usually a temporary thing, and many patients didn’t even remember it once they stabilized.
             I’m meeting with Ida’s “supportive care team” tomorrow.

            Before I left the hospital Ida crammed a letter into my bag. Whispering, she said, “Don’t let them see, they’ll deny it all, they’ll burn me for it, those witches.” Then she winked. The last time Ida had winked at me was years before, at McClaren’s, the ‘discreet treatment facility’ that was semi-famous because its alumni included James Taylor and a bunch of troubled Kennedy cousins. Ida ended up there because, just after her 75th birthday, she got into bed and refused to get up. With no warning, my grandmother stopped talking, stopped eating, even stopped bathing. This nearly killed Del who couldn’t bear seeing her once chatty and fastidious mother degenerate in a matter of weeks into a stained, silent crone. She tried reason, bribery, threats, nothing worked. Ida simply stared, usually at the television that she kept at a constant, deafening volume. I’m a guard at the Natural History Museum now, but I was in Turkey then, a sort of gofer for a bunch of archaeologists on a dig. Del didn’t want to worry me, and so said nothing during our weekly phone calls. I got suspicious only because my Ida mail dried up. After six silent weeks I badgered Del until she finally told me that Ida had been admitted to McClaren’s. She sent me a ticket home.

Leora,
            They tie me up. At night. Four thugs. One put his big hand over my mouth so I could hardly breathe. I tried to bite the bitch, but he was too strong. They threw me in this contraption, this torture chair that had all kinds of levers and buttons. I couldn’t move, not even one inch. I was STRAPPED IN. This wide white cloth was stretched tight over me from my neck to my knees. My arms were pinned so I couldn’t even scratch if I had to and I DID. They said if I screamed or told anyone they would make me stay there strapped in ALL THE TIME. They made me wet myself. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t get out and no one came all night so I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t. DESTROY THIS LETTER.

            The Geri-Chair. It looks like a skinny Barca-Lounger. It has a retractable footrest and multi-positional head/upper body support system. It pulsates. It radiates heat. Some believe the Geri-Chair is the quickest route to relaxation. Some don’t. Ida didn’t. For her, there is the posey. A posey is a six-foot long sash with a wide middle and tapered ends made of unbleached cotton. Sort of like an oversized cummerbund. Not that anyone goes out on the town in a posey. In fact, to be ‘posied’ means you are definitely in for the night, wound about the torso and then tied to some piece of furniture, like a Geri-Chair.

            Did I believe Ida’s story? Yes and no. Yes on the big picture, no on the specifics, especially the four thugs. I needed another opinion.

            “But was that chair absolutely necessary?” I asked Rosalee the next morning. “And is it customary to tie up 93-year-old women, especially one who’s hardly four and a half feet tall?”

            Speaking in tones that matched the neutrality of her beige cardigan, Rosalee told me that Ida had been complaining of sleeplessness. She explained that to help her get some much-needed sleep they had used the Geri-Chair.

            “Patients find the chair greatly relaxing since it has a gentle vibrating motion and can be adjusted at many points on the body.” She explained that the posey was a comfort to most patients, that the concept was similar to that of swaddling an infant.

            “But she is not an infant, and I do not think she was at all comforted,” I replied. There was a long silence. Rosalee took my hand. I felt the cool metal of her wedding ring.

            “It was for her own safety, Lee. The team determined that Ida was dangerous.”

            “What do you mean, dangerous?”

            “She posed a threat. To the others. And to the staff.”

            “In what way?”

            “She won’t get into bed. She won’t stay in her room. She roams the halls, disturbing the other patients. She was attacking and cursing the staff. And spitting.” Rosalee smiled. “Her aim is astonishing.”

            I didn’t tell Del about the Geri-Chair. Or the spitting.

November 26
Ma,
            They told me Ida has dementia. And paranoia. That she is irrational and upsets the other patients. She insists their food is poisoned. You can imagine, they told me, how upsetting this news was to someone like Florence, one of their long-term patients, who had always asked for seconds on the meatloaf and now was refusing to eat altogether.
            They prescribed all the antis: anti-psychotic, anti-depressant, anti-anxiety pills. Also, they want to throw in sleeping pills. So far Ida has avoided everything. They asked if I would talk to her, encourage her to take her meds, stress how much better she would feel. Then they said that if she did not soon cooperate and take her pills, they would have to “use another delivery method.” I wish these people would just use plain English. What they mean is that if I can’t get Ida to cooperate, they will have to give her shots. And that’s not all. Apparently, they can’t keep her here any longer unless we approve and the Milbury won’t take her back until the Blaine people swear up and down that Ida is stable and they won’t do that until they ‘monitor’ her for at least six weeks. They said as her health care proxy I needed to sign some papers. Part of the deal is no visitors until at least the third week.
            I tried to discuss this with Ida. I don’t think she heard one word. The whole time she roved around her room, looking behind the pictures on the wall, underneath the bed, she even shook out her pillow. Ma, she was looking for bugs, you know, like in spy movies Then she motioned me to be quiet, and handed me another letter. Here’s what it said:

They are trying to kill me. They know I figured out about the food so they switched to the pills. They think I don’t know. But I am on to them. They tamper with the little cups, switching tablets all around. And they whisper. They send it in with that woman, that social worker. Her pearls are FAKE, I can always tell. I told her to go away but she didn’t, she just stood there, fiddling with that worthless choker, and so I screamed at her, “Go to hell, you shithead bitch.” That’s when they put the poison in my pills. I know because they glow. I hid them under the mattress. HAH.

Ma, I didn’t know what else to do. I signed. I have to leave tomorrow. I have to work a bunch of doubles to make up for the time I took off.

            Everyone at Blaine’s was a specialist in geriatric mental health. Everyone talked in modulated tones. Everyone wore an expression of deep empathy. Everyone was trying to help. Everyone made me sick. Even Rosalee, who hovered protectively as she handed me her pen, a silver plated La Crosse. After, she walked me to the door, hugged me and murmured gentle syllables. She waited until she thought I was down the stairs before she shut the door. But I wasn’t. I had stopped on the landing, maybe I even sat down, I can’t remember. What I do remember is the metallic sound of clicking locks echoing through stairwell.

            I sat for a long time, long after the sound died away. Then I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the cold cement wall. I took a deep breath and whispered three ‘ohs.’ Instead of my own voice coming back, it was Ida’s that reverberated through my head. When I was little and Del and I would visit every summer Ida would stand on her fourth-floor landing and call down, “Helloo, helloo, helloo.” Her musical ‘ohs’ would ricochet off the walls and bounce off the sound of Del’s clattery high heels and my squeaky sneakers and both of us banging that hard Samsonite luggage up the marble steps. Now, all these years later, Blaine’s antiseptic stairwell shimmered with Ida’s echo.

December 1
Dear Leora,
            HAH! I outwitted them, the bitches. I escaped. In the LAUNDRY HAMPER. They wheeled me right in the service elevator and outside and when they weren’t looking I climbed out and ran around the corner and waved down the trolley and two lovely boys jumped up to help me. Boys always liked me. They told me which stop for Nickerson’s, you remember Nickerson’s such beautiful things they have there that’s where I bought you that red velvet dress with the silk trim for your piano recital, remember you looked like a princess. I went straight up to women’s dresses but Leora everything was enormous all the dresses looked like they were made for giants. So I went up to the top floor. Remember how we went to the top floor to look down on the boulevard from those tall tall windows? Remember all the tiny people and tiny cars and tiny buses? They’re still all there. Rushing around and around. I got a little dizzy so went to the coffee shop and you know what I had? I ordered your Farmer Special. So much food! Eggs and pancakes and bacon and juice and toast and potatoes and coffee. I was so hungry, Leora, I ate everything, everything. I sneaked out before the bill came.
            Don’t worry about me. I go back there to sleep. I come in at dinner time, when the shift is changing. They never know. Stupid cows.
                                                            love, me

December 29
Dear Mrs. Tillis and Lee:
            I am so pleased to tell you how very well Ida is doing. She is participating fully in our therapeutic community. She and Florence have become good friends. They usually have dinner together and watch a little television before bedtime. Today Ida told me all about Samuel. He sounds like he was such a wonderful man. I’m so glad that Ida can return to the Milbury next week. I so look forward to meeting you when you come to help her move, Mrs. Tillis. You have a truly amazing mother.
            With best wishes for a very happy and healthy new year to you both.
                                                            Sincerely,
                                                            Rosalee

Del came home to take her mother back to the nursing home. She also managed a desk job here for about six months, so she’s been a regular at Ida’s weekly card game at the Milbury. I haven’t gone yet, but I will, maybe next week, or the week after. To tell the truth, I’m exhausted, still recuperating from the holidays at the museum. They’re murder, with nonstop tourists and special patron parties and mandatory overtime. It seems like if I’m not working I’m sleeping.

February 6
Dear Leora,
            They made us sit in a circle in the foyer while two girls in matching plaid shirts and vests walked around us with huge drooling dogs. Then they all sat and howled while the girls played harmonicas. Then one of the dogs walked right up to me and laid its head on my lap. The girls smiled and said, “Go ahead, don’t be afraid, she likes you, pet her.” That dog was just like your Aunt Lucile’s miserable poodle, except the nails were green instead of blue and Lucile’s dog is thank god dead.
            When are you coming? Minna’s telling everybody that she saw your mother cheating at rummy. Of course everyone knows that Minna is a pathological liar and blind. When you come, come on a Thursday. The pot roast is better than that lousy fried fish.
                                                            love, me

ps Do you think she was cheating?
pps Never mind. Serves them right if she was.

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