Bursting Bubbles (8 page)

The phones keep ringing. An ambulance pulls up and the crew jumps out, urgently pushing a stretcher. Georgiana flattens herself against the wall.
Somebody’s died
, she thinks.
And I only just got here
. Two grim-faced women come in, wanting to pick up their mother’s things.
Their dead mother’s things
. An elderly man in a golf cap shivers up to the desk shouting that there’s something wrong with his phone – it never rings. “Mr Maisel, I told you,” the receptionist shouts back. “We checked it. Your phone is fine.”
His friends are probably all dead, too
. A couple walk past, tense as a tightrope. “I can’t stand to see her like this,” says the woman. The man takes her hand. “It won’t be much longer.”
Because soon she’ll be dead
. The ambulance crew leaves, now carrying what is obviously a corpse.
Good God, are they keeping them alive or killing them here?

The administrator of St Joan’s is Mr Papazoglakis. Mr Papazoglakis is tall and solidly built. His hair is dark and thinning and flecked with grey; his skin so pale you’d think he must live underground. Georgiana has witnessed a second ambulance’s arrival and departure, and the sudden collapse just inside the entrance of an elderly woman returning from a walk with her daughter before Mr Papazoglakis finally emerges from his meeting. By which time Georgiana has almost forgotten why she’s there.

Mr Papazoglakis has a green folder in one hand. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” he says. “And you are–” he peeks into the folder – “Georgia. Georgia Shiller.”

“Georgiana,” she corrects him.

“Most people call me Mr P, Georgia.” He says this without disturbing the even features of his face with a smile. “It’s easier than trying to remember all those consonants.”

And most people call me Georgiana. It’s easier than using someone else’s name
.

“Georgiana,” she corrects once again.

Mr Papazoglakis takes her on a tour. They go to the dining hall, the common room, the guest lounge with its almost-comfortable chairs and vending machines, the auditorium, the activity room (which, to Georgiana’s amazement, includes a row of computers) and the gym. He points out the therapy rooms, kitchen and swimming pool and the corridors of private rooms, and introduces her to several reassuringly cheerful-looking people in white uniforms whose names she will never remember even though they wear ID cards around their necks. They don’t go above the first floor; the second is only bedrooms and the third is a locked unit for those who “don’t really know where they are”. Georgiana doesn’t ask for details.

While they walk, Mr Papazoglakis explains that the main concern of St Joan’s Nursing Centre is quality of life. Dignity. Respect. Comfort. Security and safety.

“We here at St Joan’s believe that a person’s last days should be as pleasant as possible.”

“I thought a lot of people are here for other reasons than because they’re going to die,” she says. “You know, like recuperation and stuff like that.”

“We are, of course, an excellent care facility with very high ratings, but we do deal primarily with the elderly.” Mr Papazoglakis’s shrug is so slight it’s barely a twitch. “And everybody does die eventually.”

This is when Georgiana realizes that what Mr Papazoglakis in his dark suit and sombre expression most reminds her of is an undertaker. He may smell like Armani and not embalming fluid, but he looks as if he was born to sit behind the wheel of a hearse.

“Well, yeah.” She giggles nervously. “But not all at once, right?”

“Of course not.” Mr Papazoglakis still doesn’t smile, but he does make a sound that could be the first half of a laugh. “We’re a nursing centre, not a plague hospital.”

Georgiana nods.
Well, thank God for that
. So she won’t have to help dig any mass graves.

What she will have to do, Mr Papazoglakis explains, is socialize. She’ll be given a resident to visit regularly. She can read to her, play a game or even just talk. Do the little things she might not be able to do herself – thread a needle, iron a blouse, change a light bulb. Take her for walks. Do a little shopping. Depending on her limits and abilities, Georgiana may even be asked to accompany her on a short outing. The centre’s staff is overworked as it is; they have no time for any of the extra niceties.

As they come back to the reception desk, Mr Papazoglakis opens the green folder. “Now, let’s see what we’ve fixed up for you.” He runs one finger down the page. “Ah, yes.” He looks up, his face still an undiscovered land as far as emotion is concerned. “We’ve given you Mrs Kilgour.”

“Mrs Kilgour,” parrots Georgiana.

“Mrs Kilgour doesn’t have any family,” says Mr Papazoglakis, “so her visitors are few and far between.”

Georgiana guesses that this means she has none.

He looks back at the folder. “Room 10a.” He points to the left. “Just down that corridor. Come with me. I’ll introduce you. Naturally, she’ll have been told that you were coming. I’m sure she’s been looking forward to it.”

Room 10a is a cheap envelope of a room with a bed, a night table, a small dresser, a chair that belongs somewhere larger and homier – somewhere with knick-knacks on the mantel, a rug on the floor and a cat – an ancient television set, which is on too loudly, and a window, which is closed. There is a folded wheelchair in one corner and a four-footed walking stick next to the chair. The floor is linoleum and the walls are painted a sad shade of blue. The window looks out on a paved courtyard and a few dead pot plants. The only personal touch is the photograph on the dresser of a youngish woman in a long, flower-print dress holding a bouquet of roses and smiling as if she invented happiness. If this room were a person it would probably run away.

Mrs Kilgour is slumped in the armchair in front of the television, with her head on her chest and wearing only one slipper, looking like an abandoned doll. She is sound asleep.

“She’s a very interesting woman,” says Mr Papazoglakis. “But, like many of our residents, she does have a tendency to live in the past.”

Georgiana glances at the room. And who could blame her for that?

“Mrs Kilgour.” Mr Papazoglakis taps her arm. “Mrs Kilgour. You have a visitor. You remember the young lady from the high school was coming today?”

Mrs Kilgour mumbles something unintelligible, but doesn’t open her eyes.

“Mrs Kilgour. Have you forgotten you were having a visitor today? This is Georgia.”

“Georgiana,” whispers Georgiana.

Mrs Kilgour mumbles again, her eyelids closed.

Mr Papazoglakis’s phone hums softly. “Now what?” He pulls it from his pocket. “I’m afraid I have to go,” he says. “I’m needed elsewhere. She does have a touch of narcolepsy.” Which sounds like she takes drugs to Georgiana, but apparently means suddenly falling asleep. “Don’t you worry, though, these spells never last very long. She’ll wake in a few minutes. She does know you’re here.” He extends a hand for shaking. It’s as warm as a can of soda out of the fridge. “Good luck.”

Georgiana stands staring at the old woman in the chair for several minutes. If walnuts wore fuzzy pink bathrobes and had hair dyed a red normally associated with circus clowns, Mrs Kilgour would be easy to mistake for one. Georgiana is repelled by Mrs Kilgour. By her lined and sagging face. By her mottled, bony hands, the skin like crumpled tissue paper. She sniffs. Even the air in Mrs Kilgour’s room smells like it’s rotting. If anyone is going to suddenly drop dead, that anyone is sitting right in front of Georgiana with her mouth slightly open and her glasses askew.

She holds her breath, waiting for Mrs Kilgour to wake up as Mr Papazoglakis said she would, but she doesn’t. Exactly what is Georgiana supposed to do? Throw cold water on her? Or just stand here, like a peacock stuck on a desolate marsh? She knew this wasn’t going to work out. Didn’t she say that? Didn’t she say it was a bad idea? Everybody said she was wrong. Too negative. Too pessimistic. But she wasn’t. She was right. She’d much rather be fishing paper cups and food containers out of the shrubs in the park. If it were Dr Kilpatiky asleep in that chair, Georgiana would be very tempted to push her through the window. Not for the first time in her life, Georgiana wonders why she’s always being punished for things she didn’t do.

As she stares out of the window, her last bit of optimism dissolves like sugar in water. It’s now that Georgiana might think of the words of Dante Alighieri describing hell.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here
.

But she doesn’t. She’s thinking that, on top of everything, there’s no view of the ocean, either.

Albert
Grossman likes to boast about his son. There are no concerns about sex or drugs or rock and roll where Asher is concerned. No teenage inertia or teenage angst. No moodiness or sullenness. No plummeting grades or dropping out. Albert never worries about where Asher is or what he is doing. He knows where he is: working. He knows what he’s doing: more than anyone else. “He’s a chip off the old block,” Albert Grossman always says. “Being a high achiever’s in his genes.” This is an understatement. If achievement were a mountain range, Asher reached the summit of the lowest mountain when he took his first summer college course in seventh grade. And never looked back. Five years later, Asher has a 4.0 GPA, is president and will be valedictorian of his senior class, and is involved in enough extracurricular activities to keep six-normal achievers busy, including fencing, archery and martial arts. (Albert Grossman, who was once attacked by an investment banker, learned the hard way that even a corporate lawyer has to know how to defend himself.) Saturday mornings, when other boys are still sound asleep, Asher has his kung-fu class. After today’s class he has his first session at the community centre. You couldn’t say that he’s looking forward to it.

Right now, the high-achiever is sitting in his car in the small, potholed parking lot behind the centre. Or, as Asher thinks of it, the supermarket. Asher is preparing himself. Mimicking a crane hasn’t given him quite the physical and spiritual strength he needs to meet the do-gooders and the do-nothings of Queen’s Park, so here he sits, sipping black coffee from an insulated mug, feeling sorry for himself and running through a mental checklist to make sure he has everything he’ll need to get him through the next hour and a half.

He does. At least he’s pretty sure he does. It’s all on the seat beside him in his leather messenger bag – which is what high-achievers with presidential ambition use instead of a backpack. Usually it holds his laptop and school things, a bottle of spring water, several energy bars, a bag of trail mix, breath spray, tissues, a travel toothbrush and toothpaste, a roll of dental floss, several individually wrapped hand wipes and a spare pair of socks. Today the laptop has been left at home for security reasons (he’s sure someone at the centre will steal it) and been replaced by a bottle of antibacterial hand gel and disposable latex gloves (he’s sure the centre has enough germs to wipe out Los Angeles).

He sighs. Asher’s always been lucky, although he doesn’t think of it as luck, of course. He thinks he gets no more than he deserves. But he doesn’t deserve this. Of all the possible assignments the computer could have given him, why did it give him this one? Maybe Georgiana’s right. Maybe Dr Kilpatiky rigged the whole thing. Trying to teach them all a lesson. Bureaucrats have small and petty minds.

Asher’s watching a plastic bag wave in the branches of a solitary tree like a flag of truce and thinking of texting Will to meet him for lunch when the alarm on his phone goes off. Time to go in. He makes sure that he’s also set it for an hour and half from now (time to go out), and steps from the car and crosses the lot with the lightness of step of prisoners of war on a forced march.

The back door doesn’t open and no one answers Asher’s knock, so he walks around to the main entrance where a handmade sign (a badly handmade sign) says:
Queen’s Park Community Centre
. This door does open, but the handle comes off in his hand.

Asher steps inside. The place is a dump by anyone’s standards; even someone far less fastidious than Asher Grossman. Asher’s father has taught him that presentation is extremely important – you wear expensive suits, you drive an expensive car, you exude success – but no one has told that to the people who run the centre. Cheap white paint has been aimed at the walls, but it doesn’t cover the scars of age and of what was there before (the Church of Hope, a temporary licence office when the town hall was being renovated, a bargain store, a hardware store, a paint store, a five-and-ten, a supermarket in a time before supermarkets became the size of airplane hangars). The false ceiling is missing sections; the light fixtures are missing bulbs. The blinds in the front windows don’t fit and are broken. There’s a crack in the glass that has been patched with tape. The only decorative touches are cobwebs and dust. The seats in the front area are a mishmash of old school chairs, very old wooden folding chairs and an oversized old sofa. Someone is asleep on the sofa, covered with a crocheted quilt that looks like it was made in the nineteen sixties and not washed since. There’s a pillow under the sleeper’s head. The dented coffee urn is in a corner by the window. The linoleum looks older than Asher’s father. An attempt has been made to create separate rooms with makeshift partitions that double as bulletin boards. Asher can see a couple of people at the far end of the centre, but not one of them looks his way.

It has just occurred to him that, if they don’t care that he’s here, he might simply turn around and leave when he sees a very large woman bearing down on him, moving amazingly quickly for someone her size. She’s wearing baggy work pants, a handmade sweater with a standing hare on it, the hair slide of a popular cartoon character in her short, curly greying hair, and, although it hasn’t been raining, extremely orange wellies. Besides the barrette, there’s a leaf in her hair. The partitions tremble as she passes.