Rita Lakin_Gladdy Gold_01 (12 page)

20

Job Descriptions

W
e can see them as far away as
the path to the pool. A sizeable group of women milling about the Weiss
apartment. The ad we wrote must have been better than I thought, or a
lot of people need work. Even from where we are, I can see they are
quite an assortment of ages. Different heights. Different skin tones.
The few seats on the bench are taken; the others either stand or lean
against the wall. Most of them carry worn purses, shopping bags, or
lunch sacks.

We hear shouting from inside the apartment and we quicken
our pace.

In the living room, three people sit rigidly, not looking
at one another. Irving is sitting ramrod-straight on a dining room
chair, staring into space, his face red from anxiety. A thin woman who
looks fortyish also sits on a dining room chair. She is speaking very
gently to Millie, who is on the couch, her fingers tearing away at a
bit of thread on the hem of her sundress and her head turned toward the
window. Millie is shouting, "No, no, go away. I hate you."

The woman must be from Haiti. She speaks in that
wonderful lilting way, trying to calm Millie.

"But I don't hate you, hon. Not at all. You and me, we
could be friends."

"Never," screams Millie. "You make the children angry."

The woman smiles at us when we come in. "I must have said
something to anger her, but I don't know what."

"It's just her sickness," Evvie says.

"Maybe she'll get used to me?"

"No. No--get out." Millie, with little strength, manages
to pick up a pillow and weakly throws it at the woman. The woman gets
up.

"I think maybe she won't," she says, and starts out.
"Good luck to you, Mr. Weiss."

Irving can't speak so we say his good-byes for him.

"What's going on out there?" I ask. "Didn't you set
different appointment times when they called?"

Irving shrugs. "I just said come."

Millie tosses another pillow to protest this conversation.

"I thought maybe she'd watch TV in the sunroom . . ."
Again he shrugs helplessly.

Millie cackles. "Trying to put one over me, heh, old man?
Millie is too fast for the old man."

"This won't work," he says. "Tell them to go home."

We attempt to get Millie to go into the bedroom to take a
nap, but she sits as if glued to the couch. She knows what's going on
and no one is going to get any job without her approval. My heart
sinks. She isn't going to approve of anyone.

The afternoon drags on with painful slowness. One after
another the women come in, give their resumes, and try to enchant the
little princess who behaves more like the wicked queen. Haughtily the
petitioners are each and every one rejected. The "children" whisper in
Millie's ear, goading her into shamefully cruel comments.

Evvie and I exchange glances. We are getting nowhere,
fast. Irving left us six women ago to take a nap. "You pick," he said,
turning the thankless job over to us.

Finally, the last woman is gone. Millie has defeated us.
She seems to be dozing on the couch by now.

Evvie whispers to me. "Next time we do this upstairs."

I start gathering up the paper cups from the many coffee
and water offerings and bring them into the kitchen. Evvie goes off to
the bathroom.

I think back on that god-awful day when we all faced
Millie's doctor together and heard for the first time what we suspected
anyway. Millie started to tell the doctor how terrified she was of the
possibility of having Alzheimer's. This doctor, who, I suspect, along
with too many others, came down to Florida to suck the money out of the
elderly, didn't even bother to look at her. "What are you worried
about, lady? It takes about ten years for Alzheimer's to kill you.
You'll be dead long before that, anyway."

We were all too shocked to say anything.

Later, I cursed him and hoped
he'd
die horribly
and soon.

I'm pulled out of my reverie. "Come in, come in," says a
high, pleasant voice. "Don't be a stranger." I turn, startled to see
Millie through the kitchen pass-through window, beckoning to someone at
the front door. I turn again and there is a very young Hispanic woman
standing uncertainly on the threshold.

Millie walks to her with ease and graciously reaches out
to shake hands. The princess has returned. The young woman smiles a
wide, gold-toothed, lopsided grin. Millie pulls her into the living
room and whirls her around. Then she proceeds to do a right-on-target
parody of husband and two closest friends. Evvie returns to my side and
we both watch this bizarre scene. Millie has our voices down pat.

"And my dear, do you have experience? No, never mind, I
don't care about that. The important thing is can you dance?"

The woman, by now introduced as Yolanda Diaz, is
enchanted by Millie and says, pretending insult,
"Que mujer
de Guadalajara
no
puede bailer?"

"La rumba?
Cha-cha? Lambada? Tango?" asks this
expert of the salsa scene.

"Naturalmente,"
says Yolanda.

"Perfecto,"
says Millie, who has never before
uttered a word in Spanish. With that, she drags Yolanda by the hand
over to the ancient hi-fi, which hasn't been used since Millie took
sick years ago. She tosses records every which way until she comes up
with an old Perez Prado album. Millie pulls it out of its
sleeve, dusts it off by blowing on it and unerringly manages to get it
onto the record player.

Evvie and I are beyond dumbfounded.

And then, there they are, the usually catatonic
eighty-year-old woman doing a mean rumba with this very young, puzzled,
yet willing applicant, to "Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White."

Irving comes out of the bedroom in his stocking feet,
rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "What's this racket?" he asks.

"Irv, come meet Yolanda," Evvie says, smiling. "We just
hired her." With that, Millie collapses to the floor and falls asleep.