All for a Song (6 page)

I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.

ECCLESIASTES 1:16

BREATH OF ANGELS

OCTOBER 14, 2010—8:28 A.M.

Most days Lynnie likes to be wheeled down to the main room for breakfast. Not that the food is any different there. Cream of Wheat is Cream of Wheat—the same as she’s been eating since she was a little girl. But the main room has one of those big televisions, and watching the
Today
show on it is like having Matt Lauer life-size right in the room. Oh, how she loves that man. She’s watched that television show every day of its existence, clear back to when they had that monkey, but it didn’t become a part of her life until Matt Lauer took his place behind the desk.

Today being her birthday, Nurse Betten comes in with one of those shiny silver balloons and a tray covered with a silver dome. She’s not alone, as a choir’s worth of nurses and aides and volunteers come with her. It’s the largest gathering that has ever been in Lynnie’s room, and it appears there are one or two heads that don’t quite make it through the door.

On Nurse Betten’s cue, they sing, “Happy birthday, Miss Lynn-nnee” and clap their sanitized hands when Lynnie summons the breath to blow out the three candles burning in a bran muffin.

“Sorry we couldn’t fit the other hundred and four on there,” Nurse Betten
says, but she does point out where a bubbly
107
has been written with black marker on the balloon.

Apparently some bit of Lynnie’s pleasure at their attention and ingenuity shines through her eyes, because Nurse Betten leans forward and places a soft, broad hand on her shoulder, a touch Lynnie feels clear through her bone. “It’s gonna be a great day for you, Miss Lynnie.”

One by one, the crowd disperses as pagers beep in pockets and names are called over the static-filled PA speakers. In the end, only one remains, a young girl folded up in the corner chair, gnawing a black-painted thumbnail.

Lynnie stares.
Who are you?

The girl sits with her body facing the door, her head twisted to watch the clock high on the wall. A full minute goes by. The bran muffin remains untouched, Lynnie’s eyes stay fixed, and the girl’s long, thin neck never moves. The black-painted thumb is given a temporary reprieve.

Who are you?

Then an almost-imperceptible move. More like a twitch. Like she is about to turn her head before, with absolute resolution, the thumb is brought back to be punished for whatever crimes it may have committed.

You’re too old for that.

Upon continued inspection, Lynnie realizes the girl is actually older than she first thought. Not a girl at all, no more so than Lynnie had been at about the same age. Eighteen, she guesses. Or maybe nineteen. It is so hard to tell these days, with the rap videos and laundry commercials getting everybody’s ages all mixed up. She’s seen those programs, even on
Today
, how kids are getting so violent, committing crimes once thought reserved for psychopaths and monsters.

But Lynnie is not without recourse. She presses her own thin, gnarled finger to the call button beside her bed. Minutes later, a voice cracks, “Yes?” on the other end. Lynnie maintains her silent surveillance of the girl, who jumps at the intrusion. She turns just long enough to give a quick flash of her face. Thin it is, and foxlike, with high, narrow cheekbones and narrow eyes that almost disappear behind thick, black outline. Kohl, they used to call it in the old days.

She seems ready to resume her clock staring when the callback squawks, “Sorry. We’ll send someone right away.”

That’s when the girl bolts up from the seat only to run straight into the wall of Nurse Betten in the doorway.

“What’d you need, Miss Lyn—” Then, looking at the girl, she places her hands on her hips. “And just who are you?”

The girl doesn’t hesitate. “Charlotte Hill.” Her voice is as small as she is, and husky, as if it has carried her for miles and miles.

“And just what are you doing here, Miss Charlotte Hill?”

“They told me to come here.”

“Who told you to come here?”

Charlotte Hill shrugs, but Nurse Betten reinforces her stance, having none of it.

The girl starts to chew her thumb again but lets it down. “The judge.”

“The judge? This your community service?”

Some hesitation. “Yeah.”

“Who are you supposed to report to?”

A shrug. “I just came in here cuz I saw there was a buncha people.”

Nurse Betten looks at the clock on the wall, then at her watch as if to confirm the time, and sighs. “I was supposed to be off ten minutes ago. You need to go to the front desk, downstairs in the lobby, and have a talk with Mrs. Buford.”

“That’s where I went first, and nobody was there. Someone said come back at nine. So I came up here.”

“Is it nine o’clock?”

“Almost,” Charlotte says. She seems to have aged five years and gained one hundred and fifty pounds over the course of this exchange, as Nurse Betten takes the slightest step backward.

“Hm. Must be board meetin’ time. All right then, Miss Charlotte Hill.” She turns the girl around. “Have you introduced yourself?”

Charlotte looks straight into Lynnie’s eyes for about half a second, then twists her head to look up at Nurse Betten.

“Can she hear me?”

Nurse Betten chuckles. “Oh yes, ma’am. She can hear you just fine. Understands everything that’s going on. She just can’t talk.” She lowers her voice and brings Charlotte close to her, bending to whisper in the girl’s multiple-pierced ear. “Strokes do that sometimes—pick and choose what they gonna take away. She’s had three; beat them all.”

Go on, tell her the rest.

“First one, just minor, she lost use of one of her hands. But the second? That one nearly took her.” She looks at Lynnie, as if just realizing she’s in the room. “You don’t mind if I tell all this, do you?”

Lynnie waves her on with the hand God didn’t take.

“Well, the second one, they lost her for a while.”

“What do you mean,
lost
her?”

“She
died.
” Nurse Betten mouths the last word.

“No way.”

“The way she told it, she saw the light, walked right into it, saw everyone she loved waiting right there for her.”

Ma, Pa, Darlene . . .

“And came right back.”

“Awesome.”

As if she could possibly know.

“Then that’s all she could talk about. How she felt so at peace, how she couldn’t wait to go back and be free of all this pain. She’d say things like, ‘Please, Lord Jesus, take me today.’ Didn’t you, Miss Lynnie?”

Nurse Betten makes it sound like some kind of joke. How can she know the longing that pierced Lynnie’s heart with every breath? Or the urgency she’d felt? She even tried to get on the
Today
show, but they hadn’t returned her letters. She’d had a chance, once, to inform the world, and then . . .

“So when the third stroke came, naturally nobody thought she’d come out of it. But she did.”

Most of me.

“Except her voice?” Charlotte sounds disappointed.

“It’s a shame, too. I hear she used to sing every Sunday in her church
choir. And now—you don’t mind me saying so, do you, Miss Lynnie? Her face, somewhat. She don’t really smile much. You gotta watch her real close in her eyes.”

Charlotte does just that, though keeping her distance.

“So,” Nurse Betten says, patting the girl’s shoulder, “since you have to wait around for a while, why don’t you help out here? See if she needs any help with her breakfast.”

“Okay,” Charlotte says, slowly extricating herself from Nurse Betten’s touch.

“That okay with you, Miss Lynnie?” Nurse Betten pauses for exactly three seconds before clapping her soft hands together three times. “Then I am off. You have yourself a great day today. Don’t get yourself into any trouble.”

Fat chance of that.

Lynnie looks at the TV.

“Want me to turn that on for you?” Charlotte finds the remote control and, after just a brief study, the power button. “Tell me when,” she says, flicking through the channels.

Lynnie reaches out, surprised to see how clawlike her hand looks next to the girl’s, and snatches the remote away.

“Sorry.” The word is dragged through four syllables.

Soon enough she finds channel 5, NBC, the
Today
show. More than thirty minutes gone, meaning she’s missed the big stories. And Matt Lauer isn’t even there. She drops the remote control beside her on the bed and reaches for her breakfast tray.

Charlotte rolls it closer. “Want me to cut up that muffin for you?” Seconds later, her fingers—including that same thumb that had spent so much time in the girl’s mouth—are tearing the bran muffin asunder, breaking it into bite-size pieces. “Can I try it?” She pinches a bite and brings it up to sniff, holding it just below the thin gold ring that goes through her nose, before popping it in her mouth. “It’s dry.”

Worst muffins in the world here.

Charlotte continues to eat, nibbling bits from her snaggled fingers. In between bites, she removes the silver dome from Lynnie’s tray and peels
back the plastic wrap, releasing steam from the bowl of hot cereal. “You take sugar in it?”

Lynnie tries to shake her head.

“I could never eat it that way. Just plain. My grandma makes it with brown sugar and milk.” With moist crumbs still clinging to her fingers, Charlotte has unraveled the spoon from its napkin and, with something close to daintiness, dredges it through the Cream of Wheat. She holds it, suspended, just below Lynnie’s chin. “Open up.”

I’m not a baby, you snot.

Indeed, left to her own devices, Lynnie would be quite capable of performing all the tasks Charlotte has taken upon herself, though she’s been forced to forgo sugar since those little packets became so difficult to open. Still, she opens her mouth for the familiar, bland bite.

Just as she swallows, a familiar face comes on the TV. Willard Scott, the garrulous weatherman who manages at once to be both ancient and ageless, stands with the White House lawn as a backdrop. “Happy Birthday to You” plays in the background, and then the picture of a spinning jam jar fills the screen. She knocks Charlotte’s hand out of the way and leans forward. Somehow, the girl has enough wits to turn up the volume.

Every year since the first stroke, Lynnie has entered her name for the honor of being recognized for living an entire century. Or more. They used to be a rare breed, these people who lived past one hundred. But lately, Willard Scott and the Smucker’s jam jar have been saluting so many men and women that it makes turning one hundred seem as common as taking a bath. Last year she even allowed Nurse Betten to e-mail the information. But never has that jar spun around to show her name, her face.

“Norm Cheswick,” Mr. Scott announces, “lives in Brooklyn, New York. One hundred years old, and still a Dodgers fan.”

Who cares, old fool!

And then some old woman who owes her longevity to her Saturday night beer.

But after that . . .

She might not recognize herself if not for her name written so
prominently within the checkered label of the jar. They must have sent in a picture from her birthday three years ago, because she is sitting in front of an enormous slice of cake. Her mouth is open just the slightest bit, and the skin around it is slack and spotted, like it’s melting from the flames of the birthday candles.

“Well, there you are,” Charlotte says, just as Mr. Scott says her name. If Lynnie could be granted just one more word—
just one more chance to speak, dear Jesus
—it would be to tell Miss Charlotte Hill to shut up.

“This young lady is one hundred and seven years old. Can you believe that? And looking just as lovely as a sweet spring chicken.”

Oh, Willard.
Not everybody gets that kind of commentary.

“Says she spent her youth singing in the church choir. And that she’s seen the light and can’t wait to go back.”

And that is it. Her moment over. The jar spins on to reveal a one-hundred-and-one-year-old who still walks his two poodles around the block every day.

“Sing in the church choir?” Charlotte drops the spoon back in the cooling Cream of Wheat and tears off another piece of muffin. “That’s nuts.”

Lynnie picks up the spoon and runs it slowly around the edge of the bowl.

“Can I tell you a secret?” Declaring the meal over, the girl moves the tray to the stand near the door and comes back to sit herself right next to Lynnie on the bed. “I lied. Earlier? I mean, I have been arrested before. And had to serve some community service. But not here, not now.”

She bends down to whisper, even though they are clearly alone. Her breath smells like cinnamon.

“I came up here on my own because, unlike Mr. TV there, I know you didn’t just sing in a choir. I know exactly who you are.”