Jessie drew a deep breath. Deep as she dared. It hurt to breathe too deeply. She shifted her position in the straight-backed leather chair and stared at the rain outside.
She was 86 years old, and on one side of the coin she counted the blessing that her mind was sharp as a tack even if her body wasn't. Turning the coin over, the clarity of her mind only made her aware of the poor state of her health and the plodding rhythm of these final days.
She looked about her furtively, so as not to be caught looking. Here at the home, many of the elderly objected to being looked at. Can you blame them? she thought, we all know what we look like, and we'd rather not be seen, even by people older than we.
There were six of them in the dark day room, all of them younger than she. I haven't met a person older than me since I've been here. It's not likely I shall, she continued thinking. Mr. Sargent in the corner, was he asleep? Dead? No, not dead. His upper body rocked back and forth ever so slowly, like a metronome. Why would God permit a man to sit in a dark room with his eyes shut? Is this the triumph of medicine? Therapy and pills, sitz baths and high colonics .... we shall live forever. Stop by in a hundred years or so. Mr. Sargent will still be sitting here, rocking to a largo beat with Jessie Perkins staring at him from across the room.
"Hi, Mrs. Perkins. How 'ya doin' t'day?"
Oh God! Jessie thought, it's that little high school kid. What was her name? Oh, yes, Nancy. Look at that skin! Not a blemish. Full of fat and future ... she smells like new mown grass. Must be after three o'clock.
"Hello, Nancy, how was school today?"
"Great, Mrs. Perkins."
"Would you call me Jessie, dear?"
"Why sure if you want...Jessie. It feels funny though, a kid like me calling an ol...a lady like you by her first name."
"Suppose I called you Miss Pogliani?"
"O.K., I see what you mean. Y'know, that's why I love comin' here in the afternoons. Y'get to learn things they never teach in school."
"Have a boy friend, Nancy?"
"Yeah, kinda. Not really, I mean y'can't just go places alone, y'know?
Jessie looked at her and smiled. "No, you can't." That much hadn't changed, thank Heaven. "You know, I had a boy friend at 16 too. Nothing came of it...but a girl couldn't go places alone in my day either. I had a lot of boy friends, Nancy, right up until the war. There was a Ralph, a Frank, a Desmond -- one at a time, mind you."
"Wow! You swung, huh, Jessie? Guy I'm goin' with name's Swede."
"Finished with your community service, Nancy?"
Nancy's eyes clouded, and Jessie immediately regretted having said it. But after all if she couldn't get over this small hump in the course of her life, how could she face the rest of it?
Nancy's voice was more wooden than it had been. Some of the fat and the future had been drained from it. "Not yet, Mrs. Perkins." A sparkle reappeared in her eyes. "I'm gonna be sorry in a way when it is. I won't be comin' here, I mean."
She reached out her hand to Jessie, a flawless and flexible hand with a class ring and enameled nails. Jessie took it in both of hers and saw the passage of seventy years. What would this child's hand look like in seventy years? Would the triumph of medicine keep it as young and supple as it is today? Would she sit here with these beautiful hands in a straight-backed leather chair and stare at the falling rain?
"Had your time on the computer, Jessie?"
"I was hoping you wouldn't get around to that. No, dear, I haven't. It's not for me -- really. I don't like typing anyway, I like to see the words under my fingers."
Nancy stood in front of Jessie. "Come on, I'll show you some tricks. There's nobody in the room. There's never anybody in there."
Jessie got up stiffly and leaned on Nancy a moment. Like a mother teaching a child its first steps, Nancy took Jessie's arm and slowly walked her into the computer room.
"I hate it in here," Jessie objected, "It's too bright; the lights hurt my eyes. I don't know why the home went to the expense anyway -- we could each have a television set in our room for what this thing cost."
Nancy gently eased Jessie into the cushioned chair in front of the monitor. "There you go; you know how to turn it on, don't you?"
"Chair's too high, my feet are dangling. First thing you know they'll fall asleep and I won't be able to walk again."
"C'mon, Mrs. Perkins...Jessie. Stop fussing. You sound like an old lady."
"I am old. I'm 86 damn years old, if you want to know, and these things scare me." She pushed two buttons and the monitor slowly brightened. "There. I know how to turn it on; you don't have to tell me how to turn it on."
Nancy sat on the arm of Jessie's chair. "Now you've got to punch in your password. Remember your password? You told me your password in case you forgot. It's a secret between us, O.K.?"
"It's 'CHERUBS.' How could I forget cherubs?"
"It's a beautiful password," Nancy said. "Cherubs are angels, ain't they?"
"Not this one. It's a bar I used to go to in the city with a boy named Jimmy Riordan. Before the war it was. The big war, not the piddly little tin horn wars we got these days."
"Geez," Nancy marveled at the old woman. "My father wasn't even born 'til after the war. What happened to Jimmy Riordan, Jessie?"
"He was the first, y'know what I mean. The first one to mean anything to me -- like your Swede fella."
"Yeah, the first is special, ain't it? What happened to him, Jessie?"
"Went off to war. Pilot. Flew Mitchell bombers over France. Germany." She blinked at the word "CHERUBS" on the bright screen, then sniffed. "Got married over there. Sent me a letter sayin' -- sorry Jess, guess you won't be likin' what I have to say."
"Why don't you look him up, Jessie?"
"What do you mean, 'look him up'?"
"If he's alive and he has a computer you can find him on the internet. If he's on the same server as you, you can talk to him just like he was here in this room with you."
"You're out of your mind! First place he's got to be dead -- he'd be older'n me. Believe me, young lady, nobody's older'n me. Besides he's married and I don't go chasing after married men." Jessie felt her color rising. Wouldn't that be something? Of course, he would be a widower, wouldn't he, just like I'm a widow? It was sixty years ago, wasn't it?
"Last I heard he was in Ansonia, Connecticut, Nancy."
"How long ago was that?"
"When Desmond died -- gotta be...." She thought a minute. "....fifteen years."
Nancy took over the search for Jimmy Riordan. "I wanna make sure I spell it right, Jessie -- is that R-E-A-R-D-O-N?"
"No! Course not. It's an Irish name, R-I-O-R-D-A-N, ....here, let me write it out for you."
Nancy looked sidewise at Jessie. "How did you know he lived in Ansonia, Jessie?"
"Well, he sent me a card when Desmond died. It was mailed from Ansonia." Nancy started to giggle. "Well it's not like me to forget something like that -- yes, I know it was a long time ago, almost fifteen years to be exact, but I thought it was nice of him ... and I just happened to remember."
"I was one year old, Jessie.......I think we're gettin' lucky! Yahoo's got eight Riordan's, two of them in Ansonia. There's a William and a James.
"You don't need to go any further, Nancy. It's him, the James Riordan in Ansonia. I found it myself over a month ago."
"Why didn't y'tell me?"
"Figured maybe you wouldn't find him. Took me a while -- couple of days actually."
"Did'ja send him e-mail?"
"No! Why would I want to do that? We had our lives, Nancy. We knew each other maybe four months. Four months out of eighty-six years. I been through a lot since then, so's he. I've had four kids from two husbands, Lord knows what he's been through. We're like strangers now. I wouldn't know him if I saw him, and I wouldn't want him to see me."
"Oh, that's sad, Jessie -- you musta loved each other, you could ... could." Her voice trailed off as she faced a great fact of life.
It goes one way and one way only and as we pass from gate to gate, even though we might turn and look lovingly behind us, we must go forward.
(Copyright 1999 by Harry Buschman - No reproduction without express permission from the author)