Grandpère (11 page)

“Thank you for your time. Sorry we had to bother you. Come on, Dave, she obviously isn’t here,” Todd says, and I watch out the window till they pull out of the yard. My held breath comes out with a big whoosh.

Grandpère is shaking his head, laughing at me. “I think Todd knows. He’s
pretty smart. I saw him look at the
Archie
comics on the coffee table, and I
think he would remember that Jane Moberly was Ben’s girl. They didn’t even ask your
granddaughter’s name, eh? He knows if we have her, she’s okay.”

I don’t think he does know, but I haven’t lied to them about anything, unless lying by omission is the same crime as telling an untruth. I sure am glad that she wasn’t here when they came. Thank you, thank you, I say in my head to whatever god is looking out for us right now. I call Faith and tell her about the cops coming, and she says she’ll phone the lawyer and tell him.

Angel gets on the phone, and I ask her how things are going. “They are so nice. Tammy and Sarah gave me a whole bunch of clothes that don’t fit them anymore, and we are going to walk to the mall after supper so we can meet some of their friends. I never had my own cousins before, and I am the only girl cousin they have. We’re already friends. We are going to go ice skating tomorrow because Auntie said they could have one day off school to show me around.” She sounds so bubbly and happy that now I am sure we did the right thing sending her home with Darcy and Faith. “But I miss you and Grandpère already,” she says before she hangs up.

At bedtime, I fall asleep when my head hits the pillow, and if I have dreams, I remember none of them in the morning.

Chapter Seven

The following week Rose
phones and tells me that the people who run the home want to start a vegetable plot
there for the old people to tend. She says that they have the funding to build raised
beds so that even the ones who aren’t able to walk can still get out and tend them from
their wheelchairs. When they were wondering who could manage a program like that, she
thought of me. Am I interested?

“I sure am,” I tell her.

Rose wants me to come and talk to the board. “We’re having a birthday
party for Mrs. Daly, who is turning one hundred, and some of the board members are
coming tomorrow. That will be as good a time as any,” she says. “Bring Grandpère. He
might like to visit with some of the old folks.”

When I tell him we
are invited to the home for a birthday party, he is not really sure he wants to come.
Then I explain about the garden, and he approves and says he might as well tag
along.

I find my gardening books and read over the sections about
raised beds. I want to refresh myself on how to manage raised beds, as this is not a
practice I use here at home. It seems as though the only problems are keeping enough
moisture in the soil, as the beds tend to dry out quicker in the heat than soil in the
ground, and making sure they’re deep enough for root crops to develop.

When we head out the next day, Grandpère has taken more care in dressing
than usual. He’s even put on his new bush shirt, the first time he’s worn it. “Are you
trying to look good for anyone in particular?” I tease him.

“You
never know, one of those old girls might want me,” he tells me with a straight
face.

When we drive up to the home he is surprised. “Looks more
like a fancy hotel than a home.”

The home is new, and there has
been no expense spared in the building. The door is locked, and we have to ring a buzzer
to get in. A young nurse answers the door, and she looks from me to Grandpère, probably
wondering which of us needs admitting. Before she can ask any questions, I introduce us
and tell her we are here for the birthday party. She smiles at us and asks if we want a
wheelchair for Grandpère.

“No, girl, I walk a little slow, but I
don’t need wheeled around quite yet,” he answers for himself.

She
guides us past the desk, points out the washrooms and invites us into the common room.
It is decorated with streamers and balloons, and about twenty people are already sitting
at the small tables placed around the room in a semicircle. A guitar and amplifier are
set up on a stage at one side of the room, and a banquet table on the other side is
filled with trays of fruit and vegetable platters, fancy sandwiches, cookies and
squares.

It is very warm, and both Grandpère and I take off our
outer layers and hang them on a coat rack. We take a seat at one of the tables where two
people are sitting. The lady, who says her name is Bertie, has a round face creased with
smile lines and is very talkative. She introduces the man on her left as Jack, but adds
that he doesn’t often remember who he is.

I introduce Grandpère.
“This is my grandfather, Simon Walker, and I am Anzel.”

“Are you
coming to live here?” she wants to know.

“No, we’re just
visiting,” I reply, and I can tell she is disappointed.

Jack
shakes our hands, then drifts out of the conversation, his eyes kind of blank and
unfocussed. Bertie ignores him and tells us about Mrs. Daly. “Do you know, she got a
letter from the prime minister, congratulating her on turning one hundred. She has been
here — not here in this place, but here with the home — for twenty-two years now. She
can’t walk anymore, and most of the time she thinks she is back on the farm. When she
could still walk, she used to run away all the time till they put a bracelet on her that
beeped when she went through the door. But she hasn’t tried to run away since I got
here. No one can run away now. The doors don’t open unless a nurse opens them.”

I don’t even dare to look at Grandpère. I can imagine what is going
through his head. I try to engage Jack in our conversation by asking, “How long have you
been here, Jack?”

“Eh?”

I repeat my question,
but he just looks puzzled and shakes his head.

“Where am I?” he
asks.

Bertie pats his arm. “You are right here at home, dear,” she
tells him. “We are going to have a party.”

He smiles at her, then
drifts off again.

“We don’t ask him things that will upset him,”
she explains to me in a disapproving voice.

Just then I spot Rose
in the doorway and excuse myself to go and say hello to her. Grandpère and Bertie are
talking, so I feel comfortable going with Rose to her office. She shows me the plans for
the gardens. They want to build eight beds, each four feet wide by eight feet long. They
will be built up three feet high and filled with soil to the top, and they will have
automatic sprinklers on timers. A paved pathway surrounding them will make it easy for
the old people to wheel their chairs around. It sounds really nice.

“What exactly do you want me to do?” I wonder.

“We
are hoping you’ll start the plants, then come in once or twice a week to supervise
throughout the summer,” she says. “We’ll pay you twenty-five dollars an hour, plus
forty-two cents per kilometre for your travel. You will keep track of your hours and
bill us bimonthly. We’ll pay for any extra equipment you need, plus you need to keep
track of the time and money you spend on the bedding plants.”

“That
is very generous. I think I’ll like doing this. Do you hire me, or do I need to talk to
someone else?”

“There are only two people who need to approve my
hiring. They will both be here later on.” Rose grins at me, and I know she has already
convinced them to go along with her wishes. She doesn’t exactly manipulate people, but
usually everyone is willing to do whatever it is that Rose wants them to do.

We go back to the common room, where the chairs around Grandpère are all
full. He waves at us to sit wherever, so we sit down at a table across the room from
him.

“Where is the birthday girl?” I ask Rose.

“She wasn’t too well this morning, so they’ll bring her out when it’s
time for lunch,” she replies. “In fact here she comes now.”

Two
orderlies walk in, wheeling a chair that holds the caricature of a human. An intravenous
stand is rolled along beside her chair with a steady drip connected to a tube in her
arm. She is shrunken into the pillows that line the chair, and her head bobs forward as
though her neck is made of rubber. Her shrivelled skin is discoloured with brown
patches, and a large dressing covers most of one cheek. A line of drool traces the deep
line from her mouth to her chin, and the attendant solicitously mops it up when they
come to a halt in front of the centre table. Her eyes are glazed and unfocussed.

“Here you are, dear. It’s your birthday party!” the orderly cheerfully
tells her.

There is no reaction from Mrs. Daly. She seems
completely unconscious of her surroundings, and to me it seems entirely inappropriate to
be making such a fuss over someone who is so out of it. I feel quite sorry for her, and
turn to Rose to express my dismay. She is smiling away as though it’s perfectly fine, so
I don’t say anything, but it feels kind of creepy.

A young guy
comes in to turn on the amp and spends a couple of minutes tuning his guitar. Then he
stands up, strikes a chord on his guitar and says, “One hundred years old! A new
centenarian!” and he plays “Happy Birthday.” Everyone joins in singing, and a cook
complete with chef’s hat rolls out a trolley holding a huge cake lit up with one hundred
candles. It looks dangerous, more like a small bonfire than a cake.

At the sight of the cake and candles, Mrs. Daly comes around for a moment. “Birthday
cake,” she says, and her voice, like her body, seems rusty from disuse. Then her head
falls forward again and the light goes back out of her eyes.

They
cut the cake and serve it to everyone who lines up around the buffet table. The ones who
can walk are picking up extra platefuls for some of their more stationary friends.
Nurses wheel others around and help them to dish up food, which they place on their laps
for the ride back to the table. Some of the nurses sit down and spoon-feed the more
helpless old folk. The whole scene makes me shudder, and I look to see what Grandpère
makes of this place.

But he’s not looking at me. He and Bertie are
chatting away. She is laughing at something he said, and he looks kind of pleased with
himself. Bertie has a plate of food for Jack, and when she hands him each thing and
tells him to eat, he does. Two other old ladies are sitting with them, and they and
Grandpère look as though they’re having a lively conversation. I leave him be and tell
Rose about Angel. She is delighted for us, and says she thinks Faith will set everything
to rights.

“We will have faith in Faith,” she says, and we laugh
at her play on words.

“I’m going to start some plants next week,” I
say. “The moon is dark right now, and as it rises, it will be time to start the peppers,
tomatoes and onions.” I’m already planning how much extra to plant for the home. “The
squashes and pumpkins don’t need to be started quite yet. They’ll get too leggy if I
start them too soon.” I’m suddenly excited about gardening by a different method than
I’m accustomed to.

“I knew you were the right one to organize
this.” Rose sounds excited too.

“Do you think you can talk them
into building a greenhouse too?”

“Rome wasn’t built in a day. If
this works out well, maybe that can be the project for next year. I’ve been trying to
talk them into this garden for a couple of years, but this is the first time any funding
has been set aside for it.” She sounds pleased with herself, and I know her well enough
to know that she is the one responsible for getting this project going.

“Should I plant flowers too?” I ask.

“No, the flower
beds are done by the groundskeepers — it’s part of their contract — and we don’t want to
step on their toes. It’s enough for you to do the vegetable part.” She squeezes my arm.
“There are the board members now, Anzel. Come on, I’ll introduce you.”

We follow the man and woman to her office. Bill appears to be in his
forties and Tracy is about our age. Rose introduces us, and I ask them if they have any
questions for me.

“No,” Tracy says. “Rose has told us you’ll be
able to help us get this program up and running. We trust her judgment.”

Bill seems to be the one who has put the funding together, and he and
Rose need to discuss other things, so I thank them for hiring me and take my
leave.

The young guy with the guitar has been playing softly
throughout the meal. Now he turns the amplifier up louder and sings “Home on the Range.”
Lots of the old people sing with him, but others just sit and stare with blank faces. I
look at one old man who hasn’t spoken to anyone; a nurse fed him each bite from her own
hand. He is dressed neatly and still has a full head of hair, the wiry kind that defies
the comb, but it’s tidy, and his hands stay crossed on his lap in front of him. It’s his
stare that’s disconcerting, for he looks around constantly, letting his gaze stop here
and there as though he’s looking for something that he’s not finding. He doesn’t look
sad or happy; he looks lost. I notice his foot is tapping in time to the music, though,
and I reflect that music still gets through when most of the other connections are
missing.

The guitarist breaks into another song, and with some
surprise I realize he’s singing a John Prine song that Lorne used to sing:

Please don’t bury me down in that cold, cold ground.

No, I’d rather have them cut me up and pass me all around.

Throw my brain in a hurricane, and the blind can have my eyes . . .

Send my mouth way down south, and kiss my ass goodbye.

I am somewhat surprised by his choice of song, and some of the staff
must be too, for a couple of heads poke around the corner and look at him. He just
smiles back with such an infectious grin that they shake their heads and grin back. He
sings for about an hour, and everyone looks as though they’re enjoying the music. I
watch some of the ones who seem to be missing in action, and they’re all connecting to
the music, some of them swaying, some tapping a hand or a foot. It seems they are, in
their own limited way, enjoying themselves.

Except for Mrs. Daly,
who seems to have gone quite to sleep. The nurse has put a party hat on her head, and it
has slipped down on one side. Her head leans sideways on the pillows, and her untouched
cake sits in a plate on her lap. It’s sliding dangerously down her lap, and the nurses
have left her propped up in the place of honour beside the cake trolley.

I decide I should go rescue the cake before it hits the floor. I walk
over and reach for the cake just as it slides over onto her blanket. I turn it right
side up and go to grab a napkin to wipe up the icing just as a nurse comes to help. We
both scrub a little bit, but she says it doesn’t matter, they’ll get a clean blanket
right away. Mrs. Daly could be a plastic doll in a carriage; she neither wakes up nor
moves through the whole procedure. The nurse wheels the birthday girl out of the room,
and the kitchen staff start clearing off the buffet table. It must be the cue for the
party to end, as everyone gets up and starts dispersing down the hall.

I go over to Grandpère just as Bertie says goodbye. “Come and visit any
time, Simon,” she says to him, and keeps turning around and waving till she rounds the
corner.

“Ready to roll?” I ask him.

“You bet,
sooner the better.” He’s already going for his coat. He’s walking faster than he usually
does and seems in a big hurry to be leaving.

When we get to the
car, I ask him how he liked it. “If I ever get to the stage of some of those wrecks in
there and don’t notice, just put me out of my misery. I don’t want to live like that.”
He’s quite agitated and hits the dash with his fist to emphasize his words.