My name is Charlie Morasse. I am one of the thirty seven 'guests' of the Falling Leaves Rest Home. Most of us in the Falling Leaves Home for the aged spend the day jockeying for a place by the window. We're curious about what goes on outside. I'd be the first to admit there isn't much to see however, and the little that goes on out there doesn't hold a candle to what goes on in here.
The Home is a place of rapid change-people you speak with today may not be here tomorrow, and if they are they may be different from the people you spoke with yesterday. Changes occur to the elderly at a bewildering pace. My friend and roommate Seymour for instance, a friend of two years standing. We sat discussing our problems of elimination just this morning. I was two days overdue, he was right on time. He was fortunate to leave this world in a blessed state of complete evacuation and were the tables turned, I am sure he would have left his good fortune to me. We give each other what we can.
So we turn back to the window to see if life goes on outside-it is a steadying influence. Although what happens outside is of no concern to us we keep abreast of the weather and the slow and steady changes of the season. We chuckle comfortably to ourselves when it snows and pity poor Dexter for having to shovel. We take particular notice when doctor Miles Outerbridge's black Mercedes appears every Tuesday, knowing that in spite of his encouraging words we are far beyond his ability to turn back the clock. We are not particularly interested in time, so long as the clock keeps running. The ladies enjoy his visits more than the men. Bertha Wollensak, although crippled and pretzellized with arthritis manages to get into the blue silk dress she bought for her seventieth birthday twenty years ago. She writes her symptoms on a slip of paper with a shaky hand and monopolizes Doctor Outerbridge as long as she possibly can. Lotte Weissenbach is so nervous she must be sedated. If the doctor were female I am sure we men of the Home would make fools of ourselves as well, but as things stand he represents an intrusion and an element of competition the old men can well do without. He is a weekly threat to what little masculinity we still possess.
Seymour used to call Falling Leaves the 'clubhouse'. He theorized that we had all finished our eighteen holes, tallied our scores and sat around having a beer or two before it was time to head for home and call it a day. I will miss Seymour and I wonder who will take his place in the bed next to mine. I am a light sleeper and I wake with a start at the slightest noise and I was grateful that Seymour did not snore. He was not perfect mind you, but he was about the best you can expect. I grew used to his excessive interest in the bowel movements of his closest friends, both male and female-it showed the goodness of his heart. His, as I have stated were faithful to the end. I think he just forgot to breathe. It is a common cause of death here at Falling Leaves. Someone can be sitting there passing the time of day with you and the next thing you know they aren't there anymore-they have slipped away, as we say. Seymour would invariably greet you with a cheery, "Had your shit today?" If, like Seymour, I have any advice for the elderly it can be summed up simply by saying, "Don't forget to breathe."
I am more animated than usual today due to the exciting news that Falling Leaves has engaged a Guest Activities Hostess. We are guests here of course, not inmates or patients. The term 'guest' implies that we have been invited and that as 'guests' we may come and go as we please. We are neither able nor willing to come and go as we please but it helps to think the option is open. Many of us still have a hat or two hanging on the clothes tree in the front hall.
After paying my respects to Seymour as he exited by way of the service entrance, I have spent the remainder of the day at the window awaiting the arrival of the Guest Activities Hostess. Her name is Claudine Prolifka--an intriguing name, a mix of east and western Europe I presume. I am told she will teach us to do things-useful things, things which will make our lives here more meaningful. Those of us not confined to wheelchairs or encumbered by prosthetic devices may learn to dance again. Others may thread beads or paint by the numbers. There is the possibility that the most fragile among us may find such excitement suicidal but we all agree that the challenge is worth it-"no pain, no gain" they say. The alternative is 'slipping away' without so much as a 'by your leave'.
Nurse O'Casey made a point of nudging me the other day and with what I thought was a rather lewd wink told me the new 'Hostess' is quite a looker and that we old lechers had better watch our step. I was thoroughly deflated. She is passing fair at giving enemas but completely blind to the feelings of old men.
My vigil by the window was rewarded-but I got the shock of my life! Claudine Prolifka is none other than Heidi Hollander, my first love! I bolted upright in my chair...how can it be? It was such a wonderful time for both Heidi and me. It is certainly sixty years since we said goodbye on the eve of the Great War and yet she is lovelier and more desirable than ever. I have given her a wide berth while the other 'old lechers' fought to take her bags. None of them were able to lift them so they were left for Dexter. She is definitely Heidi, the same dark hair falling in careful disarray, the same amber eyes. How clear it comes back to me! How can it be? I watched her walk and there are some things you never forget. She had a dancer's walk-a turning at the waist, as though she were winding herself up for a tour jete. It's not a look-alike, it is she!
I returned to my room to get my breath. Had I been a drinking man, and if Falling Leaves permitted its 'guests' to imbibe, I would have had a stiff one-"Here's how, Doctor Outerbridge!" I was not alone, my new roommate was settling in. He was in a "threesie" before. Now he's in a twosie. His name is Hugo, he's toothless and deaf as a post and like many deaf people assumes everyone is whispering behind his back. It's not going to be easy with Hugo, but for the present I've got more important things on my mind. How am I going to handle Claudine Prolifka? I am a reasonable man, I don't believe in miracles or ghosts, yet I am faced with the undeniable evidence that our new Guest Activities Hostess is a woman four score and upwards, who should be in the clubhouse with the rest of us.
I have checked myself in my shaving mirror, and it is I, just as I am in the looking glass, not as I may have been when Heidi and I were young. How can I be as I am, and she be as she is? Something has gone wrong. I'm not blind and I'm not forgetting the greater part of my life was spent with another woman I grew to love even more dearly and with whom we begat three sons-one in Minneapolis, one in Atlanta and the other buried beside her in Evergreen. Heidi and I never got off the ground, and with the slipping away of Seymour and the coming of Hugo, my mind is in a whirl.
Perhaps the night will bring an answer. It often does. I firmly believe that if one sleeps alone he can solve the problems the world is helpless to solve on its own. O'Casey tells me it's dinner time-"Shake your ass and get down there," she tells me.
"Would the world suffer if I ate here in my room?'"
"Look, this ain't the Plaza, Dexter ain't meals on wheels-you're one of the ambulatories-move it-move it!"
Stimulation is one of O'Casey's strong points-at both ends of the spectrum, and I couldn't reveal the complexity of my dilemma to her so I pulled myself together and followed her slowly down the stairs knowing I would see Heidi/Claudine at the staff table.
The meal began with pineapple salad, it was a specialty of the house and served whenever there was something afoot. Even those who could not attend the evening meal, those who were compelled to eat in their room would know something was going on downstairs when they saw pineapple salad on their trays.
The occasion was the introduction of Claudine Prolifka as a new staff member, and Pastor Sweetwood rose to tell us of the fascinating things she was going to teach us to do.
I was very nervous being in the same room with Claudine. Although I realized she would never recognize my time worn face, her uncanny resemblance to Heidi, and the memories of our youthful intimacies made the situation unbearable. Something else occurred to me-my name! She's bound to recognize my name! I couldn't keep that a secret for long. Then, when Pastor Sweetwood announced that they would both pass among us to be formally introduced, I stood and asked to be excused. For a brief moment Claudine and I locked eyes and stared straight at each other. Did I detect a glimmer of recognition? The look was identical to those quizzical glances of reproach I occasionally got from Heidi long ago whenever I did something she didn't approve of. Sweetwood (damn his soul) remarked "That's O.K. Charlie, we understand, we all have to go sometime."
At that moment I wished Sweetwood would go permanently and take his mealy mouthed homilies with him, but I did glance quickly at Claudine to see if the name "Charlie" rang a bell with her. Not a glimmer! But the quick glance was enough to assure me that it was indeed Heidi Hollander. She sat there holding her fork over her pineapple salad in precisely the same way Heidi did over her blini that final evening at the Russian Tea Room. I made my way to the door with no intention of coming back that evening and slowly made my way upstairs. Realizing I would be awake with gas in an empty stomach as well as a troubled mind all night, I stopped in at Bertha Wollensak's room. Bertha was not an ambulatory and took all her meals in her wheelchair where she could look at the brick wall across the street. Her bones were brittle and nature had nailed her joints shut but she had a sharp mind and an eloquence that seemed to grow more flexible as her body grew more rigid. She could keep a secret too.
"C'mon in Charlie, what's the pineapple salad for?"
"The new activities director," I replied, "You going to finish those chicken croquettes?"
She screwed up her nose at the croquettes, "Help yourself, finish the squash too-honestly everything they give you here looks half et before you get it"...she cocked her head at me a little..."you look a little peaked, Charlie-have a bad day at the office?"
Well why not I thought, if there was anyone I would trust with a secret in this place it was Bertha. "Can you keep a secret Bertha?"
"Charlie Morasse, I've got so many secrets I have to keep them in folders. Every brick in that wall over there hides a secret. I know something about everybody here, even O'Casey. The only one I'm not holding secrets for is Sweetwood"-she leaned back a bit in her chair-"I'm looking forward to his, I'll bet he's got some beauties."
So I let it out. It came in a rush. I told her about those magic days before the war, long before I'd met Hester, how those days remain fresh as a daisy in my mind, and how guilty a man feels when they take so strong a place beside the memories of being a husband and a father. "Fifty years ago, Bertha, and I can still recall her scent, the muscles in the calves of her legs, the funny way she said 'Sharlie'-she was French/Austrian, you know?" Then I went on to tell her about Claudine-"They are one and the same Bertha-no doubt about it!"
Bertha put her claw-like hand on mine, "You old dog, Charlie...she must have been something special. I just hope there's a couple of old bastards out there who remember me that way. They should-I wasn't always like this you know."
"I'm sure they do, Bertha-but just suppose you saw one of them now...would you recognize him?" That was the whole point. The implication was not lost on Bertha who in any case looked ready for bed with another Falling Leaves secret to digest along with her half-eaten chicken croquettes. I was about ready to turn in also. It had been a long day. If Seymour hadn't chosen this day of all days to cash it in, I might have laid it all out for him.
So here I am, flat on my back, Hugo softly snoring next to me and wondering about the life I've led. I've been a good husband, on the whole faithful but with a nagging memory of youth and romance. A time when there was no tomorrow and sharing that time with a woman I really never got to know. If the war had not come, if I'd never met Hester, if Heidi was all there was...what then? What then?
Are you Heidi, Claudine? ...it's been a long day.
It was an even longer night. Between a couple of catnaps I was too tired to get up and too restless to sleep. My senses seemed to be sharper than usual and I could hear things throughout the home I never noticed before. A cry in the dark, a cough...someone padding by my door on a walker. Do you know the sound of a walker?...a click, a creak and a grunt. Outside, the wind seemed to have picked up and I thought I could hear bones rattling. How little the young know us, I thought, here I am-like Lear, "eighty years and upward" falling in love all over again. Some things are always the same, toothaches, heartburn and yes, heartache too, they hurt the old just as much as the young, and with so little strength left to fight, maybe they hurt even more.
About an hour or two before dawn I got up and stared down into what we call our patio, a strip of dirt and dying grass. Ah yes! There's the bones I heard-the wind had blown the plastic chairs in a tangled heap clear across the driveway. I went to the bathroom and thank God for small favors-you'll be disappointed O'Casey I won't need your assistance after all. I was hungry too, love is like that.
You can't sneak a snack at the home, everybody eats by the clock but I thought maybe the cook was in the kitchen and I could work my charms on her. Ophelia was a cheerful black lady not much younger than we and very susceptible to flattery. She usually got in around this time to fire up the oatmeal.
"Oo-eee, you scared the hell outa me, mister Morasse. What you doin' wanderin' around this hour?"
"Come to see you Ophelia-I've been thinking about you all night." Flirtation is a dying art, but when you desperately need a cup of coffee you'll use every rusted weapon in your arsenal. "Actually, Ophelia, I've been awake most of the night. I heard you come in and rather than ring for O'Casey I came to you."
"I'm surprised there ain't more of you," she said, "It hadda been them croquettes, they came from the chicken we had Sunday-don't get me wrong Mr. Morasse" she added, "The food's good here, good as I can make it, but it doesn't always go down too good with old folks."
Well I did get a cup of coffee and I complimented Ophelia on those gorgeous legs of hers, and with my mind dreading the coming of the day I went back to my room. Hugo had risen and was brushing his uppers and lowers in the bathroom. There are few things to compare with the sight of a man brushing his teeth in his hand unless it's the sight of Herman down the hall putting his shoe on the end of his wooden leg. We fall apart, in time we are dismembered, and we don't know which is the living part of us or the property of Medicare. Today I must face Claudine Prolifka. It's been a sleepless night, but after a memorable bowel movement and a cup of Ophelia's coffee there's a chance I may survive another day.
I picked out a red tie with black stripes, (Hester had bought it for me to wear at the retirement dinner) my gray slacks with the elastic waist band and a white shirt. The shirt had yellowed in the three years I've been here, but in the morning light it's hardly noticeable. Hugo was through in the john and I was determined to make myself as young as a man of 84 can possibly be. I took a shower-that's a no-no at Falling Leaves unless you give four hours notice. It takes them that long to find an attendant to prop you up. Well, the hell with that, I want one now, not four hours from now. I talk like a man getting ready for a date-what's gotten into me!
With breakfast over the next sporting event is the dash for the morning paper and if you lose out you must sit and watch Good Morning America. I wasn't interested in the news; too much on my mind I guess, so I checked out the bulletin board to see what excitement was planned for the guests of Falling Leaves today. There was a bus trip to a pickle factory out on Long Island, and a man was coming to show his slides of the nation's national parks. But more important than either of these was a hand-lettered note on pink paper from Claudine Prolifka saying she was having a "getting to know you" party at 1:00 p.m.
Well, there's your chance Charlie, I thought. Maybe I could put this time warp dilemma to the test-get it out of my mind. I couldn't go on this way much longer. But there were five hours to go, what would I do with myself until then? Well, it was a warm morning, Dexter had put the lawn chairs back on the patio-it might be nice to sit in the sun and think a while. Joe Acker was already in his catbird seat with his binoculars-Joe was our bird watcher and kept a daily list of the feathered friends who visited Falling Leaves. Pickings were slim for both Joe and the birds-I never saw anything but pigeons and sparrows scratching in the dirt and I suspect Joe didn't either but his list of rare species grew longer each passing day. Our fantasies are important to us, realities alone are not enough.
What with the warm sun on my chest I drowsed a bit, I fantasized too, in a way and wondered why I was here in this place, this home-I wasn't like the others. I had my buttons in pretty fair shape for the shape I was in. I thought how nice it would be if I was back in my old apartment again, to come and go as I please-on my own...on my Goddam own! If it hadn't been for the accident I could be. There I was standing in the front of the bus having given up my seat to girl young enough to be my granddaughter. She took it too! Then the cab cut in front of the bus and the driver swerved up on the sidewalk and into the wall of Citibank. Fractured skull, broken shoulder and amnesia. Everything in my past had been wiped away, it was like I was new-born-no memory of anything before the accident. I didn't know my two sons, I didn't know my name, I didn't know why I was in the hospital with a broken shoulder. They put me here. I can't blame them, who wants to be saddled with an 82 year old infant? Little by little things came back, a sound or a smell would trigger my mind into remembering something that happened long ago. When it did come back it was sharper and more focused than it ever had been, lots of things I had forgotten in the course of earning a living and raising a family-Christmas and vacations and how Hester looked on that last Easter Sunday. I must have dropped off to sleep. Someone was shaking my arm gently. "Mr. Morasse-are you all right?"
It was Claudine-God was I embarrassed! I was slumped to one side in the plastic chair, I had drooled down the front of my shirt and my tie was pulled askew. She couldn't have seen me at a worse moment, and after all my careful planning! I don't think I said anything-probably couldn't. "Mr. Morasse, we didn't get to meet last night and everyone around here tells me 'you should really meet Charlie Morasse, he's such an interesting man'-I wanted to make sure you'll be with us this afternoon."
Yes, the voice was the same. The accent not as pronounced as Heidi's but after all, sixty years in the states would account for that. "I'll be there Miss Prolifka, I'm looking forward to it."
Please, Mr. Morasse-it's Claudine."
Here was my first chance-"Please Claudine...it's Charlie."
"O.K., it's a deal." Dammit she didn't bite-I wanted to hear her say Charlie and she didn't take the bait-oh well, later maybe, I had enough to think about now.
It was later than I thought, almost noon. I must have slept a couple of hours. But God Almighty she was the spitting image of HeidixI would have bet my shirt if it wasn't she. Speaking of my shirt, I would have to change it now, but maybe I should wait until after lunch...and that means I'll have to look for another tie too. I was trying too hard, too many things to think about, why couldn't my life be as simple as Joe Acker's-count the pigeons and the sparrows.
This afternoon would tell the story-suppose she asks me to dance, could I possibly put my arms around her without blurting out the whole story? I'm not sure-I'm not.
I can now look back at those last twenty four hours. They started with the loss of Seymour and ended half-way up the stairs to my room on the second floor. That's as far as I got and I have a blurred impression of O'Casey-strong as an ox she was-with her hands under my armpits pulling me up the rest of the way. I'm not sure of the rest of it, Outerbridge was there, so was Sweetwater-they seemed to be very far away, so far I could barely hear them. I can't remember when I've ever been so tired. How young they look, Outerbridge reminds me of Hester's obstetrician whom I never met until after Herb was born and Sweetwater looks like a choirboy. I turn my head a bit to look for O'Casey but she has disappeared.
"Can someone bring me a glass?" The words come slowly, but in a voice I seem to remember from long ago.
"It's hard to understand you, are you thirsty Charlie?" "No, no...a glass I can look in...a looking glass."
I don't really know why I asked for one, except I felt like having one last look. I don't know what I expected to see except I knew it wouldn't be the same. Outerbridge brought me my shaving mirror and held it in front of me. "No, no!" I said, "Go away, I want to do it myself."
"You can't hold it, Charlie, I'll hold it for you." Outerbridge turned to Sweetwater and mumbled something about 'him slipping away'.
I shut my eyes before looking in the mirror and took a couple of deep breaths. I opened them slowly. The light wasn't as good as it could have been but there was no mistaking the full head of dark hair, the lean jaw and piercing eyes. It was me all right, the old me, not the me I turned out to be. So that's the way it goes, I thought. You go back, just before it's over you go back. It must have happened to Heidi too. She and Claudine really were the same. I tried to push myself into a sitting position.
"Charlie! What are you doing!" Outerbridge put the mirror down and pushed me back again. I tried to say her name. Over and over again I slowly and carefully mouthed each syllable.
"CLAUD-EEN-PRO-LIF-KA...get her! get her!"
"Can you understand him, Sweetwater? Outerbridge shook his head. "Something about a Claude Een. I couldn't get the rest, but he said 'she'. Is there anyone here by that name?"
"I think he's raving, Doctor. We have no one here named Claudine."
It's just as well. I couldn't face her again, not here...not here.
(c)1996 Harry Buschman