Waiting on Memory

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The third time this morning that Eloise asks about Barbara, I tell her a new lie. The old lie, that Barbara is at work and can’t be reached right now, is not working. So I tell Eloise that I’m going to go out to the front desk and call Barbara. I walk out of the room and stand by the threshold of the door, just out of view. Then, as I count slowly to 60, I think about what to do next.

“Okay,” I tell Eloise when I come back in. “I just called Barbara.” I watch her face change from tense to tranquil, as if someone had flipped a switch. She unhunches her bony shoulders. I hear her take a deep breath. “Barbara is out of town,” I tell her. “But I talked to Tom.”

“Oh yes, Tom,” Eloise says. She remembers her son-in-law. This makes the call real for her.

“Tom says that Barbara is out of town at a conference,” I tell Eloise, making it up as I go along. “She’ll be gone for a few days but she promises to come see you the moment she gets home.” Eloise understands that her daughter works, that she has a career. She knows about out-of-town conferences. She is satisfied.

“You are so good to me,” she says. I wonder.

But I don’t have much time to ponder personal ethics this morning. Anxiety is in the air. I think sometimes that mood is contagious, that residents spread nervousness and unease among each other like sniffles. Whatever the etiology, Eloise is not the only one who’s jittery today. Marianne, generally calm and composed, needs my attention. She is pacing, dressed in her usual professional woman clothes, carrying her handbag.

“Have you seen Frank?” she asks me. I don’t remember who Frank is to Marianne, but that doesn’t matter right now.

“No, I’m afraid I haven’t seen him,” I say. “But you know, I don’t get out of this section of the building very much, Marianne.” Section of the building. That’s part of the code I use when I talk to Marianne. It allows us to talk about this place without using words that identify it for what it really is.

“Well,” Marianne says. “I don’t know what his schedule is, but I assume we’re dining together.” I nod pleasantly. “When he arrives, please direct him to my office.”

Marianne is always so confident in her delusions, so articulate, so precise that it sometimes makes me doubt my version of reality. Maybe there is a downstairs here. Maybe her room is her office. Maybe she does work here. Maybe Frank, whoever he is, is waiting to take her to lunch.

The noon meal has arrived by cart, and I start lifting the domed covers from the plastic dinner plates. Underneath, the food is, mysteriously, always room temperature, regardless of what it is and when it left the kitchen. As I distribute the plates, I try to persuade Marianne that she should sit down at the table with everyone else. Perhaps Frank meant that you were to meet after lunch, I suggest. Perhaps he wants to get together for coffee. She considers this.

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