OLD SOUL
Alice Costin went in to check on the patient at two in the morning. At that time the hall was quiet. Mr. Wile awoke when she came in. His eyes followed her around the room. Alice looked down at him.
“Mr. Wile, you should be sleeping. Is everything all right?”
Painfully, eyes wet and sad, Mr. Wile nodded. He watched her empty his bedpan and rinse it out. Watched her straighten the sheet over him. Alice went out, closed the door, left him in darkness.
“Good night.”
* * * *
She was a young black woman; her brown eyes shone. She could not think about his whiteness, his dying paleness. Mr. Wile’s private doctor was still prescribing treatments. Useless. Mr. Wile was doing very poorly.
There was a man in the hall with a machine, polishing the floor. The circular smears shone. The man said, “Long night, ain’t it?” Alice waved at him and walked until she came to a stairwell. Downstairs by her locker, she took the rubber band out of her hair, took off her white uniform and stockings and put on a skirt and sweater. Didn’t want to wear the uniform home.
Noise came from other lockers, the owners of which she could not see. Without saying hello to anybody, Alice went upstairs and all the way down a corridor to a side door.
She was glad to be outside. Thanked God to be able to leave.
The bus came right away. Inside, it was brightly lit. Riding it home, Alice saw what she had seen times without number before. At two thirty all the apartments were dark, and all the phone-booth lights were broken. Very few people were on the street; the ends of their cigarettes were the only things anywhere that were not blue. Warm breeze came through the bus window.
Alice was not at all sleepy. If her husband was home now, she could crawl sweaty into bed with him and hear his rough breathing. In the morning after he had left for his job, she would go back to sleep. At noon she would see Trudy and Michael back from school. That was plenty of time to sleep, and be up all afternoon. Spend the afternoon, hot and busy, with her sister. Go back to work. . . .
The bus let her off and she walked, watched, two blocks to her apartment. The kitchen light was on; she came up the back way and unlocked the door. Everybody was asleep. She turned off the light. In bed, quiet enveloped her. Only the faint sound of a car on the street below broke the silence. Her husband was not there. Alice drew the cool sheet around her.
By the stream there are ducks, but to run toward them would be to make them swim away. In the moonlight and waiting for bedtime, everything is awkward. There is nothing comfortable to say. The girl bends over the stream to wet her hands. Standing up she brushes hair out of her eyes. Fingers run down the sides of her face. Behind her is the bridge, and against the dark-blue sky is the farmhouse, painted red with white borders. It is almost time to go back.
* * * *
The next night Alice was asked to look after an emergency case. She was sorry that she could do so little for him. The young man had been in a knife fight. He had been pounding the streets angry, and another man had challenged him. The emergency case had stuck his own knife in himself, in a spiteful rage. Now he was waiting wordless on a metal bench to be healed. A doctor bandaged him up and he was moved to a bed. Alice changed the washrag on his forehead, while he writhed from the pain in his chest muscles.
She left him with his mouth hanging open and not yet asleep and went to the basement commissary. There she bought a Radar Shake from a machine and sat at a table with two other nurses.
“Yeah, Mae, it sure is. That’s a fact.”
“I swear, nobody comes in anymore.”
“That’s true,” Alice said. “First of the two orderlies, y’know, was telling me he don’t like the way this place treats their help. So he quit.”
“Boy’s picking me up after work, four o’clock. How about that?”
The others nodded.
“He really hot for me, dig.” The girl shook her head, showed her teeth in a smile, laughed for the sake of her friends. The grandfather clock rang with crystal all around. Alice finished her Shake and sat back, cheerful, while her friends talked. In the corridors, laundry carts rolled back and forth. The voices of attendants followed them.
“I’m gonna get me some more coffee.”
“No, Mae, wait till we go upstairs. Just a few more minutes.” The girl stretched her legs under the table. The long purple scarf wrapped all the way around and felt nice and warm. Snow was clinging to it and melting. All wind came from the direction of the hewn white mountains, whole slopes of which gleamed in the sunlight. Stretching off toward the mountains was the ski lift. Sitting on one of the seats, no skis on, there was indeed the incredible sensation of flying.
“Alice B., you look lost in thought.”
“No.”
“Yeah, dear, yeah. What’s on your mind?”
Mr. Wile was asleep; Alice only had to change his bedpan. His eyes were open when she brought the pan back. Alice had nothing to say but, “Feeling all right?” She felt sorry for him, but more than that . . .
His eyes were not the least bit clouded. He looked extremely unhappy. If he talked he would be likable; now, Alice could only try not to pity him. His face was very wrinkled and how had all the wrinkles gotten there?
Alice had very little to say to Mr. Wile, except to apologize that she was bothered that night, and confused. She knew that he forgave her for being bothered. Until Mr. Wile fell asleep again, Alice sat with him and was especially quiet.
Worse. Sitting by a window in the hot afternoon, cornfield golden crisp in her mind, Alice made a frown. Outside, her own kids were playing with their friends. They kicked a blue plastic ball up and down the sidewalk, scraping. Trudy’s pudgy black arms shook when she clapped her hands. Behind the facade of hard buildings, Alice saw only more hard buildings and years of them. The blues with strings that played on the kitchen radio made the whole thing a dance. A stumpy dance, endless.
While the children in her head, small boy and small girl, ran in the corn and turned their heads up to be dizzy at the sky. Leaves brushed their tan faces; they circled and collapsed on the ground. A smell of warm dry earth came up. The boy: falling playfully, a whole corn plant under him.
Black children through the open window were the same as ever. Two of them were Alice’s own. Alice’s sister came up behind her and touched her shoulder.
“Want to get some sleep before work tonight?” the sister said.
“No thank you, Annie. And you don’t have to stay around here.”
“All right, I’ll go for a walk. Listen, honey, you okay? Because all those things you been telling me about . . .”
“I won’t tell you about no more. I’m fine.”
The sun was going down. People sat on their front steps and in windows. Time was passing very quickly. When it was time to take the bus to work, Alice felt sad. All the way on the bus, while lone studs gave her the eye, memory of cornfields and a small freckled girl forced itself upon her. She didn’t want it; it hurt.
Dr. Teagrade was sympathetic. He explained that he would rather have her off work for a while if something was bothering her than for her to be pushed and making mistakes. Alice went in to check on the knife-wound patient who was no longer an emergency case; the stitches were holding. So were the hinges on the stamp collection.
Someone had put a bottle at Mr. Wile’s bed and a tube feeding into his arm. Veins in the one exposed arm bulged. Mr. Wile looked up and Alice returned his stare.
“I see that someone thinks you’re not eating enough, Mr. Wile. You better watch out, hear, cause they’re after you.”
No reading the eyes.
“Are you cold in here?” He had the sheet pulled up to his neck. Mr. Wile nodded. Alice turned up the thermostat. She crossed the room and reached for the bedclothes.
Mr. Wile had a long purple scarf, old and faded, wrapped around his neck. One touch, and Alice was shocked. She remembered the scarf. At once she could sense his concern. She put her hand on the scarf; he was a scared little boy, caught. And what could he say?
Please. Please. Let me stay, for I need you to hold on to. I need you.
Solid. Please. I need you.
What could she say?
Don’t stay.
* * * *
A dozen graying men sat in the oak-walled chamber. Napkins and glasses of water were on the table. As he watched, two more men came in carrying briefcases. One of them, a large man with a blond mustache, walked to the head of the table and put his case down on it. There was an important stock option to discuss; already the water glasses were half empty. He tried to concentrate.
“You awake?” Her husband’s voice startled her. A car went by below.
“Yes.”
“What’s been wrong with you? You driving me crazy, you know that.”
A balding man scrawled something on his pad of paper. He looked up just as a fresh pitcher of water was brought in, and smiled.
“No, Chad, I can’t help it.”
“You know what it is I mind. Only what you been telling the children. Now listen to me, woman. You going to stop telling them stories. Else I’ll assume you’re crazy.”
“I won’t.” Had to concentrate on what the mustached man was saying. There was a decision to be made. A very important one.
“No more, Chad. No more to the kids. But I’ve got to tell somebody. Let me tell you, Chad.”
“Don’t tell me no stories, I don’t want to hear no stories.”
“Chad, they’re in my head! What do I do?”
“Don’t tell me no stories.”
The mustached man took papers from his case. And if a mistake was made, there could be disastrous consequences. Had to concentrate. Had to know. “Chad.”
Chad turned over on his stomach. Alice was shaking; she hugged him and pressed her face against his shoulder. A fresh pitcher of water was brought in. Suddenly the table rose up, the room spun, the old men started shouting. “Chad.”
Lights in the ceiling flashed brilliantly and the paneled room flushed white suds. Alice winced; tears fell from her eyes onto the pillow. When the phone rang, she waited to catch her breath before answering.
“Mrs. Costin?”
“Yes, Doctor, what is it?”
In nurse’s uniform, Alice walked to Mr. Wile’s room. The door was open. Dr. Teagrade was inside. Mr. Wile’s eyes caught Alice at the door, and his neck muscles strained. He was breathing hard, spasmodically. He followed Alice with his pleading gaze as she crossed the room.
Mr. Wile had tears; Alice had tears for Mr. Wile. He wanted her help. The briefest sign of panic touched his face. He shuddered, trying to hold on. With a rush of energy that she could feel, he sent all of himself out to her.
But what Alice saw stopped her and she was unable to respond. Unable to say anything or to accept the thoughts. What Alice saw was a young black woman, herself.
It was his picture of her. It was so unlike what she knew of herself that she could not keep the revulsion down. His angel of mercy, see what she looked like. A good black woman. And she recoiled.
Saw only his horrified expression.
The hold was broken. She began to cry and was interrupted by a sensation that chilled her every bone. Mr. Wile was dying, and she felt it.
The fear, the futility of holding on. Skin on the skull was peeling away. Muscle burned. Gastric acid came up hot to fill the mouth, choke it. Plastic shot through the arteries to plug them; all canals were stuffed.
Green mold grew on the decaying head, because the head was forced free of caring. It belonged to the centuries. Blood gurgled in its throat, the last breaths. Teeth tore free of the lips, exploded in a fan. Around the stringy neck, the long purple scarf was rapidly tightening. Up to the chin and higher.
Alice felt it around her neck, the hot wool breath, the squeeze. She pulled at it with her hands and hands did not help. She opened her mouth and the woolen muffler filled it. It crept down her.
She coughed it up. Air filled her lungs. Death left her. She lay on top of Mr. Wile, on his bed.
Mr. Wile was dead. He had been thrust out, shaken from his last hold. Alice stood up slowly. She saw; she held his head in her hands and cried.
Dr. Teagrade said nothing. The private doctor hung his head.
“Ask the nurse to back off, will you?” the private doctor said.
“I think she liked him,” said Dr. Teagrade.
Alice backed off. She wiped her face with a Kleenex. How could she keep from crying, all the way home, about the old man? What could she have done? Alice asked no questions of herself on the way home. There were too many.
She climbed into her sleeping husband’s bed and waited for morning. All night she cried.
He stood in wet sneakers at the side of the stream and felt tadpoles between his fingers.