Donna thought her friend’s response somewhat peculiar, but that was probably why she was in Pond House.
As the day wore on, it was disclosed that the woman had no family. There was no one.
“There wouldn’t have been any Festive Chicken either,” Cynthia said, “that’s for sure.” She had her old mouth back on her, Donna noticed.
There was discussion in the room about what had happened. The old lady had been eating the Jell-O. She hadn’t said a word. She’d expressed no dismay.
“She was clueless,” one of the fat girls said.
“Were you friends before you came here or did you become friends here?” Donna asked them.
They looked at her with hatred. “She’s a nut fucker, I think,” one of them said.
They looked so much alike Donna couldn’t be sure which of them had struck her in the hallway. She thought of them as Dum and Dee. She pretended she was a docent leading tours. The neuroses of these two, Dum and Dee, are so normal they’re of little concern to us, she would say, indicating the fat girls. Then she pretended they were her jailers over whom she held indisputable moral sway.
The barking-dog alarm had not worked at the old lady’s house. It was a simple enough thing, with few adjustments that could be made to it; its function would either be realized or it wouldn’t, and it wasn’t. Donna had gone outside into the street and walked slowly back toward the house, avoiding the nestling. Then she had run, waving her arms. There had been no barking at all, only the sound of her own feet on the crushed-rock yard. It had not worked in her own apartment either. It had not even felt warm.
Poor old soul, Donna thought.
Night was flickering at the corners of the hospital. There was the smell of potatoes, the sound of wheels bringing the supper trays. They always made the visitors leave around this time.
“Cynthia,” Donna said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Why?” Cynthia said.
At home, Donna pretended she was on a train with no ticket, eluding the conductor as it sped toward some destination on gleaming rails. She made herself a drink. She almost finished it, then freshened it a bit. The phone rang and it was Cynthia. She was delighted it was Cynthia.
“You will not believe this, Donna,” Cynthia said. “You know that new guy, the really annoying one? Well, at dinner he was saying that when women attempt suicide they often don’t succeed, but with men they do it on the first go-round. He said that simple statistic says it all about the difference between men and women. He said that men are doers and that women are deceivers and flirts, and Holly just threw back her chair and—”
“Who’s Holly?” Donna asked.
“My roommate, for godssakes, the one who hates you. She attacked this guy. She gouged out one of his eyes with a spoon.”
“She gouged it out?”
“I didn’t think it could be done, but boy, she knew how to do it.”
“I wonder if that could have been me,” Donna said.
“Oh, I think so. It’s bedlam in here.” Cynthia laughed wildly. “I want to leave, Donna, but I don’t feel better. But I could leave, you know. I could just walk right out of here.”
“Really?” Donna said. She thought, When I get out of here, I’m going to be gone.
“But I think I should feel better. I lack goals. I need goals.”
Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea, Cynthia using the phone. Donna preferred sitting quietly with her in Pond House, offering to get her little things she had expressed no desire for, reflecting about Dennis, her married man who had not come by to see her once. Of course he was probably still annoyed about his car, although he had filed no charges.
Cynthia kept talking, pretty much about her life, the details of which Donna had heard before and which were no more riveting this time. She’d had a difficult time of it, starting in childhood. She had been an intense little thing but was thwarted, thwarted. Donna walked around with the phone to her ear, making another drink, crushing an ant or two that ventured onto the countertop, staring out the window at the dark only to realize that she wasn’t seeing the dark, merely a darkened image of herself and the objects behind her. She sipped her drink and turned toward some picture postcards she’d taped to one of the cupboards. Some of them had been up for years. One was of a city, a cheerless and civilized city similar to the one on the old woman’s playing cards.
Cynthia was saying, “I just can’t accept so much, you know, Donna, and I feel, I really feel this, that my capacity to adapt to what is has been exceeded. I—”
“Cynthia,” Donna said. “We’re all alone in a meaningless world. That’s it. OK?”
“That’s so easy for you to say!” Cynthia screamed.
There was a loud crack as the connection was broken.
Donna had no recollection who had sent her the postcard or from where. She couldn’t think what had prompted her to display it, either. The city held no allure for her. She had no intention of taking it down and looking at it more closely.
Later, she lay in bed trying to find sleep by recounting the rank of poker hands. Royal Flush, Straight Flush, Four of a Kind, Full House … A voice kept saying in her head, Out or In. Huh? Which will it be? Then it was dawn. She had not slept but she felt alert, glassy even. She showered and dressed and hurried to Pond House, where she had coffee in the cafeteria. Her eyes darted about, falling on everything, glittering. There was her coat, hanging on a hook next to her table. The coat seemed preposterous to her suddenly. Honestly, what must she look like in that coat?
Up on Floor Three, Cynthia wasn’t in her room but one fat girl was, her face red and her eyes swollen from crying.
“I just lost my friend,” the fat girl said.
“You’re not Holly then,” Donna said.
“I wish I was,” the fat girl said. “I wish I was Holly.” She lay on her bed, crying loudly.
Donna looked out the window at the street below. You couldn’t open the windows. A tree outside was struggling to burst into bloom but had been compromised heavily by the parking area. Big chunks of its bark had been torn away by poorly parked cars. When she was a child, visiting Florida, she’d seen a palm tree burst into flames. It was beautiful! Then rats as long as her downy child’s arm had rushed down the trunk. Later, she learned that it was not unusual for a palm tree to do this on occasion, given the proper circumstances. This tree didn’t want to do anything like that, though. It couldn’t. It struggled along quietly.
She turned from the window and left the room where the fat girl continued sobbing. She walked down the corridor, humming a little. She pretended she was a virus, wandering without aim through someone’s body. She found Cynthia in the lounge, painting her long and perfect nails.
Cynthia regarded her sourly. “I really wish you wouldn’t visit me anymore,” she said.
A nurse appeared from nowhere like they did, a new one. “Who are you visiting?” she said to Donna.
Cynthia looked at her little bottle of nail polish and tightened the cap.
“You have to be visiting someone,” the nurse said.
“She’s not visiting me,” Cynthia muttered.
“What?” the nurse said.
“She’s not visiting me,” Cynthia said loudly.
After some remonstrance, Donna found herself being steered away from Cynthia and down the hallway to the elevator. “That’s it,” the nurse said. “You’ve lost your privileges here.” Donna was alone in the elevator as it went down. On the ground floor some people got on and the elevator went up again. On Floor Three they got off. Donna went back down. She walked through the parking lot to her car.
She would come back tomorrow and avoid Cynthia and the nurse, too. For now, she had to decide which route to take home. It was how they made roads these days; there were five or six ways to get to the same place. On the highway she ran into construction almost immediately. There was always construction. Cans and cones, those bright orange arrows blinking, and she had to merge. She inched over, trying to merge. They wouldn’t let her in! She pushed her way in. Then she realized she was part of a funeral procession. Their lights were on. She was part of a cortège, of an anguished throng. Should she turn on her lights to show sympathy, to apologize? She put on her sunglasses. People didn’t turn their lights on in broad daylight just for funerals, though. They turned them on for all sorts of things. Remembering somebody or something. Actually, showing you remembered somebody or something, which was different. People were urged to put them on for safety too. Lights on for Safety. But this was a funeral, no doubt about it.