Every Waking Moment (12 page)

His eyes betrayed him. He must have thought of the consequences of such an infraction.

“I don’t want to put you in a bad position,” she said. “If you’d rather I come back tomorrow, I suppose I can just
 
—”

“No, no. I’m sure it’s all right. If she was here, she’d let you in. I think if you work at a place as long as you have, you’re entitled to visit any room you want.”

Keys jangled as they walked the hall. Miriam smiled and waved at a staff member at the desk. Buck flipped on the light in the outer office and mumbled something about the keys, then tried two before he found the right one.

Miriam turned on the light and Buck lingered in the outer office, watching but not watching. She knelt at the box behind the door and found the file marked
Treha
.

The folder was empty.

Her head went light. She rummaged through the files surrounding it, but the pages she had seen, the handwritten notes by Dr. Crenshaw, were gone.

She put the file back and closed the door behind her.

“Didn’t find what you were looking for?”

She shook her head, thoughts filling her mind. Bad thoughts. She put a hand on Buck’s arm. “Maybe it would be better if Ms. Millstone didn’t know you let me in tonight.”

Buck paused, but something playful showed through the lines and wrinkles on his face. “Why, the only reason you came back here tonight was to make sure Vera got her piece of cake, Mrs. Howard.”

He laughed and she gave him a hug and walked to the parking lot, where she found Charlie asleep. She was going to peck on the window but didn’t want to startle him, so she opened her
purse to get the remote and saw Devin’s card beside the letter to Mr. Davidson.

Miriam stood outside the car, thinking. What was the connection between Crenshaw and Davidson? What did they know about Treha that she didn’t? She stared at the letter and the card in the light of the parking lot until she heard the door lock click.

Charlie drove her home without a word.

TREHA WOKE
at first light, as she always did. No matter how long it took her to get to sleep, no matter how late into the night she read
 
—and some nights she read all night
 
—when the sun peeked through the blinds that didn’t close, her mind whirred. She showered and looked at herself in the small bathroom mirror and the bad thoughts returned.
Ugly. Fat. Nobody likes you. Misfit. Why are you going to work? Nobody cares about you.

She dressed in the same scrubs she had worn the day before and opened the refrigerator. How could she keep weight on when she didn’t eat much? She had wanted to bring home a few scraps from the restaurant the night before, but they didn’t allow it. “All you can eat” meant all you could eat at the table. Her stomach growled and her mind raced. She thought of Dr. Crenshaw’s letter. Perhaps he would awaken today and tell her about the man Davidson.

She brushed her teeth and sat on the top steps, watching the parking lot and the street beyond as people began their day. Men in trucks passed, women in uniform, and kids with backpacks and jeans riding low and halter tops doing the same.
She heard the familiar
pad-pad
underneath her a second before Du’Relle stuck his head around the corner.

“Hey, Miss Treha.”

“Shouldn’t you be getting ready for school?”

“What do you mean? I am ready. You don’t like my outfit?”

The boy loped up the steps, wearing baggy shorts and a long T-shirt, hanging on to the railing and leaning like a gymnast.

“Don’t do that
 
—you’ll fall.”

“You sound like my mama. I’m not going to fall.”

“Your mother is smart. You shouldn’t take chances.”

That made him lean farther and Treha wanted to grab him and pull him back, but she stared at the street instead.

“How come you haven’t left for work?” Du’Relle said. “Usually you’re gone by now.”

“I’m waiting for my ride.”

“Your ride? Since when did . . . ? Hey, where’s your bike?”

“I don’t have one anymore.”

“What are you talking about? You and that bike have been together ever since I’ve known you. You’re like Siamese twins.”

“Someone stole it.”

Du’Relle cursed and Treha gave him a stern look.

“Sorry, Miss Treha. But that’s about the meanest thing I ever heard, somebody stealing a bike from someone like you.”

What did he mean,
“someone like you
”
? Did this waif of a boy feel pity for her? That was what she felt for him with his father gone and his mother working two jobs until late.

“That makes no sense,” Du’Relle said. “Did they take it from your apartment?”

She recognized Mrs. Howard’s car pulling into the lot and walked past him, tugging his shoulder. “Don’t lean over the railing.”

“I’m real sorry about your bike, Miss Treha. I’ll keep my eye out for it.”

Treha got in the car and Mrs. Howard smiled and leaned forward. “Is he a friend of yours?”

Treha told her his name and that he was a pest, but a nice pest. “He keeps me company even when I don’t need it.”

Mrs. Howard drove toward Desert Gardens, talking about the weather, her retirement party, and Dr. Crenshaw’s condition, which hadn’t changed. She grew serious as they neared the facility.

“Devin asked me something at dinner that I dismissed, but I was awake a lot last night thinking about his question. He wants to interview you. To follow your story like he has others at Desert Gardens.”

“What does he want to know?”

“I think he wants to tell your story.”

Treha didn’t respond. She wanted to say she didn’t have a story. She had taken other people’s stories.

“Devin has a desire to follow you and perhaps film you bringing someone back.”

“Do you think I should?”

“I don’t know. I have reservations about it. But last night I tossed and turned and decided that I shouldn’t be making up your mind about such things.” She opened her purse and pulled out the letter Crenshaw had written to Davidson, handing it back to Treha.

“I can’t speak to anyone at Desert Gardens. And Ms. Millstone won’t let them in.”

“I plan on talking with Ms. Millstone. That’s part of why I’m going back today. . . .”

Mrs. Howard kept talking but Treha didn’t hear her.
Somewhere inside, in some place touched by the books and stories she read that told her what a mother and daughter should be like, she wanted to scoot close and hug the woman, to put her head on her shoulder and cry or laugh. But she couldn’t. This was a fence she couldn’t climb, and even if she tried, there was razor wire at the top.

Treha glanced at street signs and jumbled the letters of the road they were on.
Oracle
. Dr. Crenshaw would quiz her, get out his stopwatch and ask her to make as many other words as she could in a minute. At least four letters.

Lace. Real. Clear. Coral. Lore. Care. Race. Coal. Role. Oral.

“Treha?” Mrs. Howard said, jarring her from her word trance. “Would it be okay with you if I talked with Ms. Millstone? About you? About your future at Desert Gardens?”

Treha nodded, staring straight ahead.

“You can think about the interview with Devin. Maybe let me know later.”

When they arrived, Buck was just getting off his shift. Ms. Millstone had moved him to overnight as one of her first executive decisions. He tipped his hat to Treha and Mrs. Howard as they entered.

“Now don’t give me that look, Buckner,” Mrs. Howard said.

The man laughed. “Then don’t you call me that. Only my mother calls me that. Just surprised to see you back so soon.”

“Well, the world is full of surprises.” She turned to Treha. “Go ahead and clock in. I’ll catch up with you a little later.”

“You have a good day, Treha,” Buck said warmly.

He and Mrs. Howard spoke as Treha walked to the employee room behind the reception area. She swiped her card and turned to her locker. On the outside was a note written in heavy black ink.

She looked at the initials and wondered what the woman’s middle name was.
JDM
was on the bottom of all her notes, all her paperwork. Initials that stirred something inside Treha. Something like fear.

She found the mop and yellow signs and filled the rolling bucket with warm water and soap. She pushed the contraption down the hall, trying not to slosh when she crossed a bump. Past room after room, she tried not to look, but as she heard familiar voices, familiar sounds, it became more difficult. The
click-click-ding
return of Hemingway’s typewriter. Then a high voice running through scales.
“La la la la la la la la. Do do do do do do do do.”

As the noise faded, she pushed past Ardeth’s room and heard whimpering. It was faint, almost imperceptible over the sound of the wheels under the bucket. Something like a soft sob.

Treha stopped and backed up slowly, pulling the bucket by the mop handle. The door to Ardeth’s room was slightly ajar and Treha leaned close to the opening. “Mrs. Ardeth?”

No answer. Just the noise. Like the weeping of a frightened child. Treha pushed the door open. The room was dark, but light from the hall showed Ardeth on the floor, holding up a hand, reaching out.

Treha rushed to her and took her hand. “You’re okay now. I heard you from the hallway.”

No words from the old woman, just emotion and distress. She was a child who had lost her way, who had fallen and wanted help.

“Mrs. Ardeth, can you get back in your bed?”

Her mouth opened, but not to answer. The pain had taken over, had brought bewildered eyes and a vacant stare.

Treha began stroking Ardeth’s hand and arm, rubbing her shoulder. The old woman’s muscles were tense and shaking, but after a few moments she began to relax and the arm went limp.

The voice cracked and sputtered. “Tiffany?”

“It’s Treha, Mrs. Ardeth. How did you get down here?”

The woman looked around and the movement made her gasp. “I can’t remember.”

“Where does it hurt?”

“All over.”

There was an emergency button on the wall, but Treha couldn’t reach it. When she moved, the woman grabbed her arm more tightly and held on.

MIRIAM DECIDED
not to speak with Jillian Millstone about the empty file until after she’d had a conversation with Elsie. If there was anyone who would know about Dr. Crenshaw, it was her. The two of them were an item around the facility, though they tried hard to conceal it. Neither wanted to become a point of conversation, an aged cliché.

She signed in at the front and spoke with the receptionist briefly, skirting the reason for her return. The Lovebirds were in the dining hall, leaning close to each other and talking as if a jet plane were nearby getting ready for takeoff. An intimate conversation about bowel movements spoken at levels that made others look at them with furrowed brows, and Miriam couldn’t help but smile. The overflow of loving each other this long was both glorious and maddening. Not so much the topic of conversation but the fact that they were still in love, still growing toward each other rather than away.

She quickly moved down the hall as Charlie came to mind. Why couldn’t Charlie be like
him
? Why couldn’t they be lovebirds? She was willing to draw closer and give her heart to a man with such commitment, but his heart had become filled with stocks and bonds and retirement funds and figures. There had
to be more to life, more to a marriage than the bottom line. Life was not measured in a bank statement.

“Miriam?” someone said. She glanced up to see Elsie with her three-wheeled walker, heading the other way.

“I was just coming to see you,” Miriam said. “Are you headed to breakfast?”

“I thought I might get a little something. You want to join me?” Her voice rattled and crackled but the sound was heavenly to Miriam.

“Why don’t you let me get it for you and bring it to your room?”

“No, I try to avoid cocooning. I usually eat with the rest of the herd.”

“Please, Elsie.” Miriam caught the woman’s eyes and tried to communicate. “I’d really like to speak with you alone. If you don’t mind.”

Elsie’s eyes softened. “All right.”

Elsie gave her usual list for breakfast: English muffin, no butter, a bowl of oatmeal, a small fruit cup, and a glass of orange juice. Miriam quickly retrieved it from the dining hall, skirting the staff and residents, then hurried back.

Elsie’s room smelled of talcum and rose, maybe cinnamon or clove with a hint of mint. An elderly person’s potpourri to overcome the other smells of alcohol and cleaning solution. She sat in her easy chair, stately and queen-like. Behind her was a faded quilt with tiny markings all around, words and numbers Miriam couldn’t decipher. The blinds were open to let in the full light of the morning. At her side was a nightstand with a lavender-colored lampshade that cast light on a Bible so worn and falling apart it looked like it might have been printed by Gutenberg himself.

Miriam placed the food on a tray that pivoted over the woman’s easy chair and Elsie smiled. “I didn’t order toast.”

“That’s for me,” Miriam said, pulling a chair from the nearby desk.

“Boy, this is service,” Elsie said. “You never did this while you were running the place. Maybe you can come back here every day.”

“I wasn’t planning on coming back at all, but circumstances changed.”

“What circumstances?”

“Well, Treha, mostly. She and Ms. Millstone are not getting along.”

Elsie ground her teeth. As long as she had known her, Miriam had never heard Elsie utter a bad word about another human being. She suspected that was about to change. The woman’s back creaked, literally creaked as she leaned forward and lowered her voice. “I’ve been trying to pray for that woman, but she is going to be the death of this place. You can see it in her face. My guess is she probably believes in evolution. That we crawled up from the slime, survival of the fittest and all that. She treats us like single-cell organisms. What I can’t understand is why she came here if she doesn’t like old people.”

“She’s very competent, and I believe she means well. . . .”

“Means well, my foot. She has no business here. I wouldn’t let that woman babysit my turtle if I had one. If it was dead, I wouldn’t let her bury it.”

Miriam stifled a smile. “Well, we have to deal with what is, and she’s here now. She’s in charge. We have to live with it.”

“No,
you
don’t have to live with it; you’re retired.
We
have to live with it. Treha does.”

Miriam nodded and told the woman about the dinner the night before, that Devin and Jonah might not be allowed back.

“See what I mean?” Elsie said. “Those boys have brought life to this place. Letting us tell our stories and remember. How is that hurting anybody? Millstone is a nursing home Nazi if you ask me.” She took a bite of oatmeal and chewed as if it were required.

“But there’s a twist in the story. Every ending means a new beginning, right?”

“You’re asking me?” Elsie said.

“Isn’t that what you believe? When God closes a door, he opens a window?”

“Listen, honey, God has closed doors and windows on my fingers. You won’t find that window-and-door thing in the Bible, though I suppose it’s generally true. He redirects us through the circumstances. I believe that. But I prefer to lean on Proverbs 3:5 and 6.” She recited it, punctuating the “trust in the Lord” and “lean not on your own understanding” parts.

“I wish I had your faith, Elsie.”

The woman cocked her head. “Now what is
that
supposed to mean?”

“I wish I could trust in God the way you do.”

“Fiddlesticks.”

“No, I’m serious. I believe. I just don’t know if it makes any difference. God seems awfully disinterested in my life. But your faith is real and vibrant.”

“Like I have something special, right? You don’t know how many times I hear that kind of thing and it drives me up a wall. I don’t have some pipeline to God that’s unavailable to every other human. I only have a tiny smidgen of faith
 
—” she held out a pinkie and measured the fingernail
 
—“but God says if
you have faith as big as a grain of mustard seed, you can move mountains. Uproot trees. It’s not my faith that’s the key, or how much of it I have; it’s where I place it that matters.”

Miriam nodded. “You’re right; you’re really nothing special.”

Elsie threw her head back and laughed. “I’ve heard that, too.”

Miriam finished her toast and brushed the crumbs from her fingers. “Not having access to the facility has given Devin a new idea. He’s interested in following Treha’s story. Finding out more about her. Showing her gift. At first I was dead set against it, thinking they might try to exploit her, but the more I’ve thought about it, slept on it, the more I think this might be good.”

“Treha’s story,” Elsie said vacantly, staring at the tile floor. Some light seemed to enter her face. “Now there’s a movie I’d like to see. Sometimes I wish I knew what she has been through in her life and then other times I don’t think I could handle it.”

“I know a little. The trouble is, I don’t think she knows much more than that.”

“Jim used to . . . Dr. Crenshaw would say that Treha listens to stories here and makes them her own because she can’t remember her past. She’s a memory stealer. But she doesn’t do it to be mean; she does it to fill in the gaps.”

“That’s the real reason I wanted to talk with you. Dr. Crenshaw.”

Elsie put her spoon down and stopped midchew on the oatmeal. “He’s not gone, is he? You didn’t wait until now to tell me . . . ?”

“No, no, his condition is critical, but he’s still with us.”

A look of relief flooded her. “I hadn’t wanted to ask. I thought in the hallway that you wanted me to come back here because
he was gone and you were just working up to telling me.” Tears filled her eyes. “I don’t know what I would have done if . . .”

Miriam put a hand on her arm. “We’ll keep praying, Elsie. Even if I don’t feel like God is listening. We’ll just keep using the little faith we have, right?”

A tear stair-stepped the woman’s wrinkled cheek. “I don’t want him to suffer. I really don’t. I know he’s old and in pain. I know he wouldn’t want to live hooked up to machines. His body’s tired and worn-out. And I know his soul is at peace. But I sure would like to tell him good-bye.”

More tears and the napkin went to the eyes. Miriam put an arm around her, thinking it might take the woman a while to recover, but Elsie took a deep breath and jabbed her spoon back in the oatmeal.

“I don’t like it cold,” she said, her mouth full.

“I don’t want to upset you with any of this.”

Elsie waved an arthritic hand. “I’ve been thinking of him every moment. Alone in that hospital. That verse going over and over in my head
 
—the one people use to say God won’t give us more than we can handle, 1 Corinthians 10:13. They think temptation and the hard stuff of life are the same. I don’t believe that for a minute. He does give us more than we can handle. He lets us go through deeper waters so that we cling to him; that’s the whole point of having faith. If we could handle everything, there would be no reason for us to need God.”

Miriam listened. Once Elsie got on a roll, it was best to let her continue. And truth be told, she liked hearing the strength of Elsie’s faith.

“I’m not big on claiming verses. You hear people say that a lot. ‘I claimed this verse or that verse for such and such,’ as if they have God’s arm behind his back because they read something
and can remember it. I’ll tell you one thing: he knows a lot better than I do what I need. And he knows the same for Jim, too. But if I were to claim a verse for him
 
—and I’ve been praying this for him every day for the last six months
 
—it would be from Ephesians 1, where Paul says, ‘I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given.’” She punctuated the “confident hope” with a wag of her finger. “I don’t know if he has a heart problem or a brain problem or something else, but God knows how to flood us with light and understanding. He knows all that’s wrong and what it’ll take to fix us.”

She put her head back against the chair and pushed the tray away.

“I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“No, you didn’t. I get tired so easy these days. Just getting up and getting dressed makes me want to go back to bed, but then it takes so long to go to sleep. I just lay there and doze and wake up and the deep sleep feels so far away. It’s like going to a party but you have to always watch through the window; you never eat the cake or get to wear the hat. I’m not complaining
 
—I know this comes with the territory. They say age is a state of mind. Don’t you believe it. It has very little to do with the mind in my case. It’s my hip and my joints and my bladder. Gray hair is a crown of splendor nobody wants. You can look that up in Proverbs 16, the EAV, Elsie Authorized Version.”

“How did you learn so much about the Bible?”

“Only one way to learn and that’s to open and read it. Ask questions. Listen to others who know it better than you do. And stay away from the people who think they have God figured out or who say they know the code. You have to come to the Bible humbly and admit you don’t know everything
 
—that’s
the key. Most people come to me with a Bible question or two they want answered. Hemingway always wants to argue; he’s cantankerous. That’s fine; let him argue. The Lovebirds never ask questions; they just live 1 Corinthians 13.”

Miriam chuckled and glanced around the room. There were framed Scripture verses and knickknacks on pressboard bookshelves. A snow globe here, a Precious Moments figurine there. It had the cluttered look of an old woman who had reached her final dwelling place and was going out with as many trinkets as she could gather. The TV was dark but the radio was tuned to a Christian station that played a soothing strings version of some old song Miriam couldn’t quite place. It sounded like sanctified elevator music.

“You live your whole life collecting things that collect dust,” Elsie said. “And then you realize you’re collecting dust too.”

“Dust will never settle on you, Elsie. Your mind goes too fast.”

She put her hand on the Bible and looked up. “You said you wanted to talk with me about Dr. Crenshaw. And Treha. I think I know what you’re going to ask, but you need to understand something. When I give my word, I don’t go back on it. Integrity is the only thing they can’t take away from you. They can tax you living or dead, but they can’t take integrity.”

“Did Dr. Crenshaw tell you something in confidence about Treha?”

She looked at her hands.

“Elsie, you were a good friend to him. I think Dr. Crenshaw knew something about Treha, didn’t he?”

Down the hallway came a quick beep, the distress signal from one of the rooms. Instinctively Miriam rose and moved toward the door. She knew this wasn’t her job, but she couldn’t help it.

“I’ll be right back.”