Some Other Town (22 page)

Marcie taps the Personality on the shoulder and whispers that Mr. Bones is a puppet. “He lives in Sally Ann's purse,” she says. Marcie figures, I suppose, she should warn the Personality now. Sooner or later Bones will offer up something most likely unfortunate at lunch, and it is better that the Personality is prepared.

Because Frances is hungry and does not care how Bones might behave at lunch, she says to the elevator in general that this is Mexican Lasagna day. Then, for benefit of the Personality, she explains, “The cooks here rarely stick to a single cuisine. Last week they served Szechwan ribs with a side of wilted collards.”

Lola starts the elevator and on the ride down, she stops briefly at the third floor. It is Lola's way of giving MaryBeth a tour of Elmwood, as Steinem requested. That is, the doors open at third, we all stand staring out, and Lola says, “Well and this is Chemical Abuse. Alcoholics and drug addicts, mostly.” There is no one in the hall, we are staring at a door across from us, which is closed. So far it is not much of a tour.

But just as the elevator doors are about to shut, a man runs down the hall toward us. He is trying to catch the elevator before it leaves. “Wait,” he shouts. He is a large man, strong, a workman of some kind, he has on a plaid flannel shirt. His eyes open wide as he runs. He looks like he is in trouble.

Lola pushes the button for hold. “What are you doing?” the Personality exclaims in a loud whisper. She stops smiling and grabs involuntarily for Lola's sleeve. “The man's a drug addict,”
she hisses, loud enough we can all hear. “He'll want to knife us for our purses.”

She is going to tell Lola to start the elevator again, to quick, close the doors. But it's too late, the man has made it. He stands for a moment panting, trying to catch his breath, and then he pushes into the elevator along with us. It is a tight squeeze, he has to turn and drop one shoulder to fit, and it leaves him facing into the top of the Personality's head. She stands staring straight in front of her.

“What floor?” Lola asks the man. She sounds cheerful, like some elevator operator who is happy to have a job.

The man is still panting and doesn't yet seem to be in any shape to answer, so Lola pushes the button for ground. She must figure it's a pretty safe bet for a man like this on the run. The doors creak shut, but the elevator just stays put. We all wait, we do not ourselves move. There is only the sound of the man in flannel trying to catch his breath.

Then comes a loud clank in the shaft above us and the elevator begins to drop. It is moving very slowly, Lola looks as though she is about to say how slowly it is moving. But then the man in the shirt seems to have his wind back because he says in a low voice, “I come to turn myself in for drinkin'.”

He is talking to the Personality, it is her head he is facing. She only stares at the doors. “I come to turn myself in for drinkin',” he says again, louder, as though maybe the Personality didn't hear. “They said third floor, they told me at the desk, third floor, so I go to third floor.”

The man is shaking now, we can all feel it on the elevator. He is talking louder and louder and because the Personality isn't saying
a word, Marcie, who is standing behind the man, tries to be of help. “Third floor,” she says, and pats him once on the back. “Yes, you had the right floor.”

“But no,” the man says, very loud. “Nobody's there, see? I get to third floor and I look up and down and there ain't nobody there.”

“Oh well,” Lola says, and laughs as though that's easy enough to explain. “It's noon, they're probably all out to lunch.”

Which is the wrong thing to say, all of us in the elevator know. There are drug addicts on third floor they keep always strapped to their beds, they do not all just go out to lunch.

It is not clear why the man could not find anyone on third floor. But we have reached ground, and the man is shaking quite badly now. Lola opens the doors and we are thankful when he starts to get off. But he turns then, he faces us, he looks frightened. “It will be all right,” Marcie calls from the rear. “Come back at one o'clock,” she says. “It will be all right at one.”

The man looks at Marcie, then turns and starts to walk toward the front entrance. Lola pushes the button for basement. But then, just as the doors are closing, the man turns and starts running back toward us. The Personality gasps, she is afraid he will get on again, he will want to ride with us now all the way to the basement, maybe have lunch with us too. But the man does not try to stop the elevator this time. He only looks at us through the gap in the doors, his face pleading.

“They won't turn me away, will they?” he says. But the doors close and we do not any of us have time to answer.

We ride to the basement then and as we get off the Personality says, “Good god, do you get those people on the elevator often?”

She imagines the alcoholics and drug addicts have nothing
better to do than ride the elevators all day. But Lola sets her straight. She takes the Personality's arm and steers her under a large pipe toward lunch. “Oh no, darlin',” she says. “Addicts take the stairs. We hear them up and down, up and down all day.” Then Lola offers, “It's the crippled children who ride the elevators.”

The Personality looks surprised. “Crippled children?” she says. “You have cripples out here too?” And Lola says, “Oh my yes. A whole ward full, just the other side of our solarium—two floors up from the sick convicts' wing.”

The others nod vigorously in accord. But then because I have not been contributing, I suppose, all the ride down and even now, because it's clear I've not even been listening, “Isn't that right, Margaret?” Frances says, and gives me a jab from behind.

I have not been attending, it's true. The fact is, I'm still thinking of Ben and me, about our nights there in the grass. And how this fall in the dark at Ben's farm, it was not only all starlight and kisses. How sometimes we would stop and roll onto our backs and just lie for a while very still. Until after a while more, someone would say, “There is something I want to tell you.”

It is not so unusual, I think. Lying outdoors in the dark can make people want to say things. To say something to someone that matters. And so now and then on our nights in the grass, Ben and I would just talk and tell stories. About times we were young that have stayed on our minds—swinging alone in a park at dusk,
knowing the exact point where the sun dropped down. Seeing an ocean the very first time, the thrill of wet sand between toes. Small things we just happen to remember, things we've not told before.

There is one of these nights in particular I remember, and a small story that Ben had to tell. Which was a big story when he told it, I think, it's just that now I remember only parts.

That night Ben said that when he was young, there was a redwood tree in his front yard. Ben was raised in the West, his family owned a small ranch. It was not so unusual for houses to have redwoods then. But this one redwood tree was spectacular. It was the biggest one on their whole ranch, so tall you couldn't see to the top. And when Ben was little, he said, he was convinced it was his own tree of life. He took that redwood to heart. Every day he would lean in close to it, his chest pressed into the bark, and he would stretch out his arms on either side. If he tried very hard, he'd believed, he could reach all the way around.

“I just thought I should try for that tree,” Ben said. “I thought at the time it could happen. I would reach blind with both arms around that big tree and one day on the other side I'd feel the tips of my fingers touch. I guess I just thought that is what it's about.”

I turned and tried finding Ben's face in the dark. “What Ben?” I said. “What's what about?”

Ben looked back, I could just see his eyes, a shimmer of light caught in them.

“All of it, Margaret. All of it.” He stopped. I could tell he did not much want to explain. But then, “Love, Margaret. Take love, for example. I thought maybe that's what loving was like.”

Ben stopped again. Then watching me closely, his voice lower, “And if you were lucky, then dying too. Maybe something like dying too.”

Now at last we are at the cafeteria. Celeste, who, like me, has not said a word since we left our floor, pushes the door open for the Personality. “Well here we are,” she tells her. Then without saying anything more, she hands her a tray and a fork wrapped up in a napkin. It is all she can muster as hostess.

The Personality revives at the smell of hot food, she tries to look pleased to be here and thanks Celeste with a nod. Then she says brightly how she has been looking forward to lunch. She seems to have worked up an appetite on the ride down.

It is Mexican Lasagna today, Frances has called it correctly. As we start through the line we can see a woman who is serving large squares of it there halfway down, between the soups and assorted Jell-O salads. Usually the cafeteria offers a choice of entrees, today there was also fried chicken. But we are too late. The chicken, a server tells us sadly, was gone by twelve-fifteen.

We all take the Mexican Lasagna and “Over here,” Lola calls and leads us to an empty table. She has found us one in the middle of the room, we have to walk only a short distance to get there.

Our table is next to one with four men who are sitting in lab coats. In a low voice the Personality asks if they are from the convicts' floor. She has not missed Lola's point that there are convicts,
ill convicts, in this building, and she thinks now these men in white coats must be the convicts' physicians. “No, sugar,” Lola says, “they work at the animal lab.” In a building behind us, she says, where they do research on very small animals. And then Lola adds, “Vivisectionists, I reckon.”

Luckily, as we are eating later this noon, we have our table to ourselves. We do not know if the vivisectionists have heard Lola. We all just sit down and spread out our trays. And “Well, isn't this interesting?” the Personality says when she has got a good look at her lasagna. The cooks have layered corn tortillas between the ricotta and sauce, we can see them jutting out in little triangles at the side. “Corn tortillas in lasagna, who would have thought?” the Personality says. And Lola replies, “Beats getting 'em cut up in yer Jell-O.” You can't imagine, she tells the Personality, what they try putting in Jell-O around here.

We all take a bite. It is not as bad as it looks, we agree. And so we consider the lasagna for a while, how the chili powder the cooks have ad-libbed goes well with the lasagna's red sauce, although it does seem strange mixed in with the ricotta.

But then because there is only so much to say about Mexican Lasagna, we soon find we have exhausted the topic. And for a moment we all just sit silently and try for another bite. Which is when, to fill the void or maybe just out of meanness, the Personality directs us to Sally Ann. Apparently she's picked up on the graceless way Sally Ann slumps now over her plate and also on the oily locks in her food. She does not know this is normal for Sally Ann. She thinks only that Sally Ann could use a few pointers—etiquette, hygiene, posture—because then “My, Sally Ann,” she says. “Is that how we sit at table?”

It is a rude question, it was intended as rude, and immediately
Bones is out of the purse. Glowering at the Personality from the table's edge, he barks, “What's it to you, lady?”

The Personality is taken by surprise, she jumps a little in her chair. It is only a small jerk, still we can tell, despite Marcie's earlier warning, she wasn't expecting puppetry at lunch. But then she recovers, she remembers who she is. She stares at Mr. Bones and, incredulous, asks, “What is this, a joke?”

“No, no,” Marcie says. Marcie is still anxious to keep peace. She feels responsible for the Personality. As administrative assistant, Marcie often feels responsible for more than her share. “Don't you remember?” she says to the Personality. “I told you in the elevator, this is Mr. Bones. He's a puppet.”

The explanation does not help the Personality, we can see. She has already figured out Bones is a puppet. She is only too familiar with puppets, in fact she is sensitive on the subject of puppets. She thinks maybe we are mocking her now with this Bones. And she plans to make clear, we are pretty sure, she did not come all the way to this rotting sanatorium to be mocked by some degenerate's puppet. The Personality is not one to be mocked.

But before she can say so, before she can stand and walk out of the lunchroom as she has undoubtedly decided to do, Bones says, “Shh, listen,” and cocks his whole cereal-bowl head toward the cafeteria's south windows.

As I've mentioned, the windows in the cafeteria are small and high, at grass level with the outdoors. Still they do let in light, and because they are open, they also now let in noise. So when Bones tells us shh, we all turn our heads and listen. And yes, there is the sound, wheels screeching on gravel. One, maybe two large cars, pulling fast into Elmwood's guest parking.

We listen a moment and then “Drug addicts,” the Personality says, her eyes big. She must think some of the addicts from third floor, and maybe a few convicts from second, have got loose for the noon hour and are racing cars in our lot.

But she is wrong because we see the cars then, they stop near our side of the building, and here's something new, they are the highway patrol. Two patrolmen now run past our window view headed toward Elmwood's side doors.

“The highway patrol!” the Personality says. “There, you see?” She still thinks all this stir has something to do with drug addicts. The patrolmen have come to arrest some of the addicts.

But “Shh,” Mr. Bones says. He's just heard something more. So we all listen again, and we hear it too. Something beating at the air above us, a kind of slow flapping like some giant flag caught in a steady breeze. Except now it grows louder and faster. It whips up its own high wind, oak twigs and a plastic cup and sections of newspaper whirl past the cafeteria windows.