The Surprise

My kids hadn’t wanted to put me in a “home.” “We’ll take care of you,” insisted Deborah. By “we” she meant herself, her husband Mike, my teenaged grandchildren, Roy and Reina, and six cats whose names I can’t remember. I’m allergic to cats. Much as I adore Roy and Reina, I am also allergic to loud music.

“Come live with me, Ma,” said Howard, who isn’t married. I used to worry about that, but since he came out to me, well, you can’t worry about what’s already happened. He has a nice boyfriend but he lives alone and has an extra room. “You’d even have your own entrance.” Unfortunately, the entrance is off a small lane in a small town not far fro Kansas City, MO. I’ve been a New Yorker my whole life and I’m not about to spend my golden years away from my city.

Deborah cajoled and Howard wheedled and the upshot is I finally put myself in a “home.” I’d only been living at Golden Gardens for two weeks when Alec rolled his wheelchair over my foot, which is as good an introduction as any, under the circumstances. I yelled, he apologized, and we started going steady.

Do they still call it going steady?

Well, we held hands a lot. We held hands during the Sunday afternoon movie. We held hands a little at lunch. We held hands as we talked. In late April we held hands sitting in the garden court. In early May we rolled up our sweater sleeves. That’s when I saw it.

“Tereizenstadt,” he explained. “I was a sculptor but there I painted. They wouldn’t give me tools.” What could I say to that? I reached out to comfort him by touching the tattoo, but he rolled his sleeve back down and sighed. “I’ll tell you a secret,” he said. I looked at him. “I am very, very tired.” He gave me a look whose meaning I was afraid to read, but can you unsee things you’ve already seen?

“Don’t,” I whispered. “We’re all going to die soon enough. Why hurry?” Now it was he with no answer. “Alec, don’t you want to know what happens tomorrow?”

I was speaking generally but he misunderstood. “What happens tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow is my birthday,” I lied.

Alec took my hand. “Gilda, I know damned well your birthday is in November. You told me yourself.”

I wrestled with the idea of turning him in, but I’d seen where they put folks who were in danger of hurting themselves. I had too much respect for Alec to do that, but I spent an unhappy night trying to believe he wasn’t going to kill himself.

The next day we held hands and talked about other matters -- indoors, as it was raining. Days, then weeks passed. Alec neither killed himself nor mentioned it again.

When my real birthday rolled around, I looked for Alec first thing in the morning, as always, and, oddly, didn’t find him. I asked around. No one had seen him. Our May conversation came back to me and formed a huge lump in my throat. I made my way to his room, expecting the worst, but wanting to know.

“Alec?” I whispered as I opened the door. Faroukh the orderly was there, making up Alec’s bed. The room was as bare as if no one lived there, as if no one had ever lived there, as if Alec had never existed. I couldn’t speak.

“Good morning, Gilda,” Faroukh smiled, looking up from a hospital corner he’d just perfected. He was a huge man, almost seven feet tall and not lanky, with skin the color of roasted chestnuts and not a single hair upon his massive head. “Happy birthday. Do I dare ask how old you are?”

Trembling, I asked, “Where is Alec?”

To my surprise, Faroukh stopped fussing with the bed, came directly over and put both of his hands on my shoulders. I don’t believe he had ever touched me before. I think I was surprised that he could reach down as far as my shoulders. “I have strict instructions,” he said, in a grave voice, although he was still smiling, “not to tell you anything, except to reassure you that everything is just fine.”

I wanted to believe Faroukh, so I nodded and attempted a trusting smile. I still couldn’t speak. I backed out of the room into the hallway, and wandered aimlessly through Golden Gardens. I wasn’t really looking for Alec. I thought, something is afoot. Maybe they’ve planned a surprise birthday party for me and this is just some weird ruse to distract me. That didn’t make any sense, but as I wandered and didn’t search for Alec, I noticed he wasn’t in any of the places I didn’t look. He wasn’t in the dining room. He wasn’t in the game room. He wasn’t in the garden court. I wandered out of Golden Gardens, toward the corner market. He wasn’t at the corner market. I bought a pack of gum, which was ridiculous because I don’t chew gum; I put my chewers into a glass every night. I wandered back to Golden Gardens. I sat on a bench in front of the lobby and watched traffic. There wasn’t much traffic. I slipped into the afternoon movie and he wasn’t there either. I sat in the back and watched “The Way We Were.” I’ve always hated that movie.

By dinner time I was all worn out from not looking for Alec, so instead of going to the dining room I went to my own room and flopped down on my bed. I lay on my back and looked around. My room didn’t look so special either, but it did look as if someone lived there. It looked as if I lived there. There were pictures of my children and their families on the dresser. There was an old picture of my husband, Reuben, and his dog, Fang, on the night stand. There was a glass there too, waiting for my teeth, but I kept them in.

By and by, Faroukh knocked on my open door. “Come in,” I said.

“Gilda, I wonder if you would help me out with something?” said Faroukh. “I can’t make heads or tails of this.” He motioned for me to follow him. Here it comes, I thought. The surprise party. Why do I feel so empty? I got up and followed him down the hall, then down another hall, and into a third hall, where I had never been. I didn’t even feign curiosity.

When he stopped at the third door on the left, I didn’t have to feign it, though. I was curious. The door was open and there was a red vinyl ribbed mat laid across the threshhold. Alec rolled out of the room, patted his lap, and exclaimed, “Sit down, honey.” I sat awkwardly on his lap and he wheeled us into the room. It wasn’t a bedroom; it was a living room. Off to one side I could see a little dining room, with a little table set for two; the champagne glasses were full and the bottle sat in a bucket of ice on the counter that separated the room from a kitchenette. The other side of the living room opened into such a short hallway I could see right into the bedroom. The bed was a double. Somehow I knew it had hospital corners. “I hope you like it,” said Alec. “It took me a long time to get it.”

“For us?”

“For us.”

“For you,” echoed Faroukh, helping me off of Alec’s lap. “Happy birthday, Gilda! I’ll bring your stuff over tomorrow, unless there’s something you want me to bring right now. Don’t worry; I’ll be extra careful.” He drew the mat off the threshold and gently closed the door as he vanished.

“Alec, I was so worried about you! Are you all right?”

“I’m better than all right, Gilda. I’ll tell you a secret.” I looked at him. “I had two secrets. Getting us this apartment of our very own was the first. The second secret I have borne even longer, and now it too is ready to be shared. Are you ready to share it with me, Gilda?”

“It’s that you love me,” I whispered. “Alec, I love you too!”

Alec burst out laughing, a great roar of laughter, quite unlike any sound I’d heard from him before. I felt myself turn quite red. “That is no secret! If that is a secret, we’re in big trouble!”

“What, then?” I asked, in a small voice.

Alec led me to the bedroom. To my surprise, it had a tiny sitting room off to one side, leading to a quite decent-sized bathroom, but I wasn’t interested in the bathroom. I was interested in the clay sculpture that took up the whole dressing table. It was an elderly couple, both quite pale, neither looking especially healthy, embracing cheek to cheek, the way young actors do in the old black and white movies, so they can both face the camera. They looked beamingly happy. Behind them was a barbed wire fence, not made of clay. The fence had a gaping escape hole through which brightly painted clay flowers danced on wire springs, and above the fence was a perfect rainbow.