Losing Julia (19 page)

I sketch some of the nurses too. And not always properly clothed. The truth is, I’m in love with three of them, or more honestly, I’m in love with one of them and smitten by the other two. At my age you may figure this is a mere case of high affections, a grandfatherly crush on “women young enough to be your grandchildren!” It is not. This is pure hot lusty love celebrated in every nook and cranny of this facility, at least in my head. It’s longing until you want to claw at your chest and fall to your knees and beg for just one pouty-lipped kiss and a slight press of the loins.

My favorite is Sarah, who strikes me as one of those rare women who could fulfill both the wife and mistress fantasies on the same date. A divorced mother-of-two with a sleek black mane, dark blue eyes and the softest hands in the nursing profession, Sarah is the Florence Nightingale of Great Oaks, relentlessly cheerful and optimistic (except when it comes to her own life), with the rare ability to convince you that she actually likes being around old people. Not quite as sexy as Janet, the young blonde on the west wing, but so sincere, so absolutely honest and right there in front of you, her hand on top of yours and those eyes examining you to make sure you’re okay and what can I do for you? And she’s got the best laugh, a throaty chuckle that doubles the size of her smile and causes her to bend slightly at the waist, which makes me wince. The amazing part—this really kills me—is that her husband walked out on
her,
like maybe Marilyn Monroe was waiting for him offshore with champagne on ice.

My darling Janet is married, which complicates things, but not happily married, which raises possibilities. She has no children, but wants them, which raises more questions, and she treats me like an elder statesman, which can be exciting, though I’d rather be seen as a sweaty stable boy.

Janet’s thick blond hair is parted on the side, curled behind her ears and cut just above shoulder length. She has, quite possibly, the most beautiful neck I’ve ever seen, which means something at my age. And her breasts! Even in winter they are indisputable, a flagrant and august presence beneath her noble sweater, which is not to detract from her mischievous fanny, ever beckoning as it recedes lockstep down the hallway, left right left right. Follow me. Anywhere, Janet, you gorgeous creature. If I could have just one woman for one night, it would be Janet, and I’d be dead by morning. Au revoir!

Erica is in her mid-forties, I’d guess, with green eyes, thick black hair and a dark, Mediterranean complexion. About five foot six, she has strong slender legs, darling kneecaps and exquisitely lithe arms. Already twice divorced, she has probably slept with more men than Janet and Sarah combined, and spit a few out for breakfast. But what strikes me most about Erica is how she manages to be both tough and feminine simultaneously, which drives me crazy.

I shuffle down the hallway toward the nurses’ station, where Sarah is studying a clipboard. “Good morning, Sarah,” I say, wishing I could bury my face in that soft, salacious mane and start all over again.

“Hi, Patrick,” she chirps, firing off a huge smile that makes me sad. She always seems so happy to see me that I cannot help but take it personally, though of course she does that to everybody.

“What a beautiful dress,” I say.

“It’s my uniform, you old clown,” she says, making me feel very old indeed. She heads off down the hallway, clipboard pressed to her chest, her head cocked slightly to one side. I head for a chair, quaking.

I’d love to get laid one more time before I die. Seriously. And truth be told, I get a lot less picky as I get older. (Some nights I am kept awake by the faces of women I once turned away during my brief and misguided heyday.) I am, essentially, a horny eighteen-year-old trapped in the carcass of an Egyptian mummy. If youth is wasted on the young, and it is, recklessly so, then old age is wasted on the infirm: all that wisdom crammed into a dog that no longer hunts. And still I fantasize like a freshman.

But my lonely lust isn’t what hurts the most. The worst thing is that nobody even wants to touch me anymore.

OR IS IT
all the regrets, those desperate creatures that hound each day and hour and minute of an old man’s life? Sometimes when I feel the panic coming, I will pour a second glass of brandy and drink it straight away, but I try to be careful or the brandy and the pills I take will throw impromptu parties that I don’t care to host.

Today I feel especially anxious, a gnawing or buzzing just below my chest as though I’m infested with termites. I should go to lunch before the kitchen closes but I’m too nervous to leave my room, where I sit in the corner in the orange-colored chair with stained fabric that itches even through a cotton shirt.

My joints ache and my eyesight seems more blurry than usual. If I were younger I’d make an appointment with my doctor and tell him that something is wrong, but at my age things are supposed to be wrong. “Well, of course you feel like shit, Mr. Delaney, you’re eighty-one. Your insides are shriveling up and you’re going to die soon. What you need is a paleontologist, not a doctor.”

I reach for a book from a stack in the corner. Aldous Huxley,
The Doors of Perception.
I turn the pages until I reach a passage I have underlined:

Most men and women lead lives at the worst so painful, at the best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments, is and has always been one of the principal appetites of the soul.

Then I close the book, slowly rise from my chair and head for my closet stash to fix myself a drink.

I GOT A
new roommate today. A short guy with watery eyes, their color long faded, hysterically tiny feet tucked into baby blue loafers and big age spots all over his forehead. I didn’t have the heart to tell him the fate of his predecessors. Anyway I’ve decided not to get too chummy. The good-byes are killing me.

His name is Martin Dansfield. His daughter Trudy wheeled him in. She’s some big shot ad executive from Chicago. A real bitch, if you ask me, telling him where to hang his pants and which drawers to put his underwear in and not to make too many phone calls since she’s footing the bill.

When she disappeared into the bathroom I leaned over to him and whispered, “Tell her not to use too much of the toilet paper because I’m footing half that bill.”

He laughed so hard that I was afraid he’d expire on me.

After Trudy left I gave him a quick rundown on which nurses to avoid, which to seek out, and which I’d already claimed as mine. Then I took him down to the recreation room to introduce him around.

“UP, UP, UP!
You’re going to be late for PT!” It’s Cindy, my least favorite nurse, who storms into my room like the ringleader of an angry mob headed for Frankenstein’s castle. I have fallen asleep after lunch, and she is standing next to my bed with a look of mild repugnance. I don’t think she likes old people, not that I blame her.

“How are we going to work those muscles if you’re just lying in this bed? Up, up, up!” she barks.

I used to work my muscles in bed, but that’s neither here nor there, especially to Cindy. I rise slowly without looking at her. “I can find my own way there, thank you,” I say, taking the cup full of pills she thrusts toward me. Her forearms are huge and I wonder if she resents having to lift old people for a living. When I die, I surely hope she is not the one who finds me.

The exercise room is down two hallways past the recreation room. I walk steadily, wondering how long I can keep the wheelchairs at bay. I watch them glide past across the glassy linoleum sea bearing their ancient and often oblivious cargo to and fro.

Hanford, a tall black physical therapist with the largest smile at Great Oaks, and maybe even California, waits for me in the doorway, smiling. The first time I met him he told me, “You know, Patrick, some people think life is too short to put up with shit and other people say life is too short to let shit get to you. My problem is that I think most people are full of shit.”

He greets me by gripping my shoulders and guides me toward a treadmill. “How ya doing today?” he asks.

“Feeling like a coiled jungle cat,” I say. “It s just a question of when to pounce.”

“Easy on the oysters.”

“Chrimeny, if they serve oysters one more time, I’m gonna have to call a hooker.” I hold the handrails tightly and try to lift my knees high as I walk. Rain is pounding against the window as though searching for an opening. I remember the metallic ping ping ping of rain against corrugated iron.

“You were in Vietnam, weren’t you, Hanford?”

“Hundred and First Airborne,” he says. Behind him in the corner a large silver fan sways back and forth.

“Nasty business,” I say.

“Nasty business,” he says. “You ever in the service?”

“Pershing’s army.”

He thought for a moment. “That’s the First War, right? Early part of the century now, wasn’t it?”

“I’m impressed, Hanford. Some folks aren’t sure whether I fought in the War of the Roses or the Thirty Years’ War.”

“Frankly I thought you was on one of them Crusades.”

“Don’t push your luck.”

He presses a button on the treadmill, raising the incline. “So you gonna tell me what it was like?”

“I’m running out of breath here.”

He slowed the speed down. “Better?”

“Better.”

“You on the lines?”

“I could smell the sauerkraut.”

“Shit boy! How long?”

“Couple of months.”

“Ever get shot?”

“Shrapnel,” I say, tapping my thigh.

“Gassed?”

“Yep.”

“What’s that shit do, choke you?”

“Depends on the gas. With mustard gas it could be hours before you felt the effects. Then your skin started blistering like it was coming off, especially in your armpits and groin, and your eyes clamped shut with pain and it began eating away at your bronchial tubes. The severe cases slowly suffocated to death.”

“Some nasty shit.”

I nod.

“So what the hell was the point?” he asks, after a few minutes.

“The point?” I pause.

“Yeah, the
point.”

“Well, for starters we were going to stop German militarism once and for all. But I think the real point was that everybody’s honor was on the line.”

“Honor? Shit,” he shrugs. “Screw honor.”

“What about you, what were you fighting for?” I ask, wheezing as I step off the treadmill and take the small white towel he hands me.

“Oh that’s easy,” he says. “I was fighting to save my ass.”

Then I lie down on a bed and he lifts my limbs one by one as we listen to the rain.