The Stone Angel (30 page)

“Oh, for pity’s sake—” I hardly know what I’m saying,
in my frenzy for quiet. I’m not feeling well. Can’t you leave me alone?”

“Oh, okay,” she sniffs. “If you feel that way about it.”

Offended, she marches off, still bent nearly double. The hours are long. I manage to sleep for a while. Sometimes I listen to the cars on the street outside. They sound so busy, so preoccupied. Yet they’re unreal. They’re only toy cars out there, and the street is only a creation of the imagination. All that is, is here. Sometimes I’m dizzy, nauseated. The nurse, a new one, brings the soothing pills. I settle into hazy lethargy.

“Mother—”

It’s Marvin. Can he be here already?

“Doris wasn’t feeling well. She’ll come tomorrow. How are you?”

He towers there, looking at me uncertainly, trying to think of things to say. His broad reddish face is sprinkled with perspiration. It’s been a warm day. I hadn’t noticed. He wipes the sweat from his upper lip with the back of his hand. I’m strangely pleased to see him. I don’t mean to complain. But when I speak, out it all comes.

“You’d not believe it, Marvin, the row that goes on here at night. I never heard such snoring, and talking in their sleep. I barely slept. The woman next to me—such a talker. She can’t keep her mouth shut one minute. It’s pester, pester, all the time. Oh, if you knew what it’s like—”

“I’ll ask again about a semi-private.”

“Anywhere would be an improvement on this place. You’ve no idea.”

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll see what I can do. Anything you want?”

“No, I guess not. What would I need, here? Oh, you might ask Doris to bring my two satin nightgowns—the pale pink one, that is, and the blue. I can’t abide these gowns. Like sackcloth, they are, so heavy, and they itch. Oh—and the bun for my hair. I’ve lost the one I had. There’s a spare one in the top drawer of my dresser. And tell her to be sure to bring the hairnets—not the heavy night ones, the others. She’ll know. And some hairpins. She might just bring that bottle of
Lily of the Valley
that Tina gave me, too.”

“Okay. I’ll try to remember it all. You want anything like food or anything?”

“I’ve no appetite. The food they serve you here is slop. Just mush, that’s all. No one could eat that kind of stuff. I’ve no stomach for it. You know what they handed me for supper? A poached egg. Fancy, that was all. Not a scrap of meat. I hate eggs. Red jelly for dessert, and not a blessed thing more. They’re doing mighty well on patients’ money here, I can tell you.”

“You’re on what they call a soft diet,” he says unhappily. “It’s what the doctor said. They’re not trying to gyp you.”

“Soft diet, indeed. Soft in the head, you mean. That doctor—what’s his name? That Doctor Tappen—I never thought much of him.”

“Doctor Corby. Tappen was in Manawaka years ago.”

“Yes, yes, I know. I wasn’t thinking, that’s all—”

I’m humiliated by his correction, and it makes me cross at him. Tact was never his long suit.

“If you had to eat this sloppy mush, you’d soon see—”

“Would you like some grapes? He said fruit would be okay.”

“Well—” I’m mollified a little, and yet embarrassed,
unwilling to give in, for I know I’ve been unreasonable. It’s not Marvin’s fault. It’s no one’s fault, the soft disgusting egg, the shrunken world, the voices that wail like mourners through the night. Why is it always so hard to find the proper one to blame? Why do I always want to find the one? As though it really helped.

“I’ll bring you some tomorrow,” Marvin says. “You try to sleep, eh?”

People are always telling me to sleep, as though it were some kind of cure for what ails me.

“I will. I’m all right, really.”

“Sure?” He looks anxiously at me, and I can’t bear the memory of my whining.

“Certain. Don’t you concern yourself, Marvin.”

“Well, I am concerned,” he says. “Naturally.”

He is, too. I can see it in his face.

“What’s wrong with Doris? Nothing serious?”

“Oh, she had another of her spells,” he says. “Her heart’s none too good, you know.”

He stands there, frowning.

“It worries me,” he says.

And I see he’s afraid, for her and for himself. He’s fond of her. She means a great deal to him. It’s only natural, I suppose. But it seems unfamiliar to me, hard to recognize or accept.

“Well, you get along home now,” I say.

I feel ashamed, all at once, still to be here, to be around. What if she goes before I do? That would be unfair, unnatural.

“I’ll see about the room,” he promises. And then he walks away, and I’m alone once more, surrounded by this mewling nursery of old ladies. Of whom I’m one. It rarely strikes a person that way.

At the next bed, Elva Jardine’s man, Tom, sits on a straight-backed chair and clenches his hands together, cracking the knuckles. He’s a bald old man with a yellow-white mustache. He’s very quiet. No wonder, living with that woman. I don’t suppose he ever got a word in edgewise.

“The doctor said the stitches would come out tomorrow,” she’s rattling on. “That’s quick, he says. You’re a model patient, Mrs. Jardine, he says to me. They’re not often out this soon, the stitches. I can nearly walk to the bathroom by myself now. That’s pretty good.”

“He never said when you’d be back home, Elva?”

“Well, no, he never said in so many words. But at the rate I’m going now, it won’t be long.”

“I sure hope not.”

“You okay, Tom? You’re managing okay?”

“Sure, I’m managing. But—oh, you know. It’s not the same.”

“Yeh. Well, it won’t be for long. Did Mrs. Garvey have you in for dinner, like she said?”

“Twice,” Tom says heavily. “She’s a rotten cook. I was grateful, mind. But she can’t cook for beans, that woman.”

“Never you mind. I’ll soon be back.”

“Well, gee, I sure hope so, Elva. You want anything?”

“Not a thing,” she assures him. “I’m dandy.”

“How’s the food? Not too bad, you said?”

“Oh, it’s quite good lately,” she says. “It’s fine. I had a piece of ham tonight, and a bit of chocolate cake. Quite enough for me. I never was much of a one for eating.”

“You never ate enough to keep a bird alive,” he grumbles. “You gotta try to eat, Elva. If you don’t stoke the furnace, the fire will go out.”

“That’s what you’ve always said,” she says.

There is such a tenderness in her voice that I’m ashamed to be listening. I turn my head and lie still. The bell rings. Visitors leave. Tom Jardine clumps off along the corridor.

Everything is quiet. And then 1 hear sounds from the next bed. It’s the Jardine woman, and she’s crying. Soon I hear her blowing her nose.

“Well, this won’t speed me none,” she mutters, “and that’s a certainty.”

She pulls the drawer of the metal bedside table and begins to paw through its contents.

“Where’s my hairbrush got to? Oh, here we are. Mercy, does my hair ever need a good wash—”

She brushes at her scalp with its thin gray quilt of hair.

“Loo, loo—” She warbles with the hairpins in her mouth. Despite myself, I turn to watch. She takes the pins carefully from between her lips and jabs them at her head. I can’t see why she needs hairpins—she’s got so little hair to anchor down. She sings again, this time with words. Her voice is reedy and flutelike, sharp or flat in all the wrong spots.

Her dental plate clicks like a snapping turtle. She reaches in her mouth and pulls out the offending teeth. She holds them in her hand, regarding them morosely.
Then she sees me watching her. I turn my head away, but not quickly enough.

“Tom hates to see me without my plate,” she says. “But the blame thing’s never been a good fit. I only put it in when he’s here. I can chew just as well without it, except for crusts.”

I don’t reply. She calls across to the bed opposite, where under the bedclothes the human mount palpitates and gurgles.

“How’s your daughter, Mrs. Reilly? I seen she brought you some flowers.”

“Gladioli, they are. Pink gladioli. They’re a lovely flower, the gladioli.”

The voice of the mountain shocks me once more with its clarity, its musical sweetness. Mrs. Reilly lifts an arm to touch the flowers, a white and giant arm, larded inches deep, the fat rolling and undulating.

They’re a good-lasting flower,” Elva Jardine concedes.

“My daughter’s had trouble with her feet, the poor soul,” Mrs. Reilly says. “It’s the standing does it. Behind a counter all day. It’s a hard thing, altogether.”

“She’s a heavy girl. She’s got quite a load to carry around, there.”

“She can’t diet. She can’t diet at all, Eileen can’t. It makes her go very faint. I’m the same myself. It takes the heart out of me, entirely. You’d scarcely believe what I was given for my dinner tonight, Mrs. Jardine.”

“Yeh, you showed me. Well, it’s a crying shame all right, but it’s for your own good, Mrs. Reilly. Your doctor said so, dear. You mustn’t lose sight of that. So much flesh is a danger to your heart.”

Mrs. Reilly sighs windily. “It’s the truth, and I know
it, but it’s hard not to have a bit of bread with your meal. I’ve always liked a bit of bread with my meal.”

“Funny, ain’t it?” Elva Jardine says. Take me, for instance. I could stuff myself with bread till the cows come home, and I wouldn’t put on a blessed ounce. Well, it’s God’s will if a person runs to fat.”

“That’s so,” Mrs. Reilly penitently says. “And I’m the willful creature, to be sure. To think it was you that had to point it out to me, Mrs. Jardine, and you a Protestant. I should be ashamed.”

Her meekness turns my stomach. In her place I’d roar for bread until I was hoarse; and die of apoplexy if I pleased.

“Pan.”

The voice is like a puff of smoke, faint and hazy. Then, as it comes again, it has a desperation in it.

“Pan. Pliz—pliz—”

Elva Jardine cranes her wrinkled neck like an aged seafarer in some crow’s-nest, peering for land.

“Oh-oh. Where’s that nurse got to? Nurse! Yoo-hoo! Mrs. Dobereiner needs the bedpan.”

“All right,” an unperturbed voice answers nearby, “Just a second.”

“You’d better get a hustle on,” Elva Jardine says, “or the dear knows what’ll happen.”

The nurse arrives, pulls the curtains. She looks tired.

“We’re short-staffed tonight, and everyone needs a pan at the same time. I never knew it to fail. Okay, here you are, Mrs. Dobereiner.”

“Danke vielmals. Tausend Dank. Sie haben ein gutes Herz.”

Elva Jardine eases herself out of bed.

“I’m gonna try to get to the bathroom on my own two pins this time.”

The nurse pokes her head around the curtain.

“Wait a sec, Mrs. Jardine. I’ll give you a hand.”

“I think I’ll be okay. See—how’s this?”

“Pretty good. Sure?”

“I’ll shout if I need you, never fear.”

She totters off, hands clutching at her abdomen, back bent like a crooked stick.

The nurse emerges. “How’re you, Mrs. Shipley?”

“Oh—a little better tonight. I had a pill a while ago and it’s made me quite comfortable. Is she going home soon, that Mrs. Jardine?”

“Her?” The nurse sounds surprised. “Oh no. She’s had the first op, that’s all. She has to have two more before she’s through, if she ever is.”

“What is it? What’s wrong with her?”

“Oh, quite a lot,” the nurse says vaguely, as though she ought not to have said so much. “Never you mind about it. You rest, eh?”

“Yes, yes. I’ll rest. It’s all I’m good for, now.”

“You mustn’t take that attitude,” she says.

She starts to go, then turns back. “Do you want a pan, while I’m in the business?”

“No, thank you. I can get to the bathroom perfectly well by myself.”

“Oh no—” She sounds scandalized. “You’re not to try.”

“I can so. Of course I can. If she can, that little bit of a thing, I should think I can, too.”

“No,” the nurse says. “It’s not the same. You’re not to get up.”

Can I be worse off than Elva Jardine, that creature flimsy as moth wings?

“I’ll be out of here soon, won’t I? I’m ever so much better. I’ll be home soon?”

“We’ll see. You rest now.”

“I’ll have time enough for that.”

“You mustn’t take that attitude,” she says again.

“I should look on the bright side, eh?”

“That’s it,” she says.

She gazes at me in a puzzled fashion, as though she can’t fathom my sour laughter. Then she shrugs and goes away. Elva Jardine is back, perched on a chair beside me.

“Wanna talk now?” she offers. Then, like a miniature vulture, “You got much pain, dear?”

“Oh—some. Sometimes it’s worse than other times.”

“I know what you mean. Well, if it’s bad, you squawk. You’ll never get a darn thing if you don’t. The thing to do is tell your doctor when he makes his rounds. They can’t even give you an aspirin without his say-so—you know that? A person can’t even give their hair a wash without permission. You gotta know the ropes around here or you’re sunk. I been here three months. They hadda spend weeks and weeks getting me built up so I could take the surgery.”

“Three months? So long?”

“Heck, that’s not so long. Mrs. Dobereiner, she’s been here seven months. Poor soul, she’s hung on a long time. One of the ward aides is a German girl, the hefty one that brings around the juice, you know? Well, she told me what Mrs. Dobereiner was saying, when she’s not singing them songs, that is.”

“What? What does she say?”

“She prays to pass on,” Elva Jardine says in a ghoulish voice, heavy with the pleasurable titivation of being appalled. She leans back, folds her hands, looks at me to see how I’ve reacted.

“I could never do that, could you?” she says. “But still and all, a person never knows. Mrs. Reilly’s the one to pray, though. She prays a caution.”

She leans forward again, confidingly. “She thinks she’s the only one who knows how. Funny, ain’t it? She’s goodhearted, though. Give you the shirt off her back. Her and me are friends. I kid her. I pray, too, I says to her, what do you think of that, you old dogan? She just smiles, polite, but she don’t believe me, really.”