“We’ll get inside where we don’t have to look at it.”
But she kept standing there, looking up at the home.
“You’re going to stay right by me, aren’t you, Benjy?” she asked.
“Course I am.”
“They say,” she said, beginning to walk slowly across the yard, “they say when people get old they take to reading the obituary column to see if their names’re in it. Well, I’m not to that yet, but one thing I have noticed: I do hate going to the home for the aged, for fear I can’t get out again. They might mistake me, you know. When I said I wasn’t a patient, they might think I was just planning to escape.”
Ben Joe took her by the elbow and began walking with her. “I’ll watch out for you,” he said. “Besides, they must have a sort of roll book here. And your name’s not on it. They couldn’t keep you here.”
“Oh, don’t be so reasonable, Ben Joe.” She made an exasperated face and pinched the arm that she was hanging onto. “You’re just like your mother. So reasonable. Just like her.”
“I am not.”
“Well, no, but you surely are an annoyance.”
“If you’re not more polite I’m going to leave you here,” Ben Joe said. “And sneak up and put your name on the roll book just to make sure you stay.” He gave her a small pat on the back.
The front door of the home was huge and heavy. Ben Joe pulled it open and they stepped inside, into suffocating heat and the smell of furniture polish. The flowered brown rug they stood on was deep and made everything seem too quiet; it stretched for what seemed like miles across a huge sort of social room. There were easy chairs arranged next to the walls, and in them sat a few old people talking or playing checkers or staring into space. In the center of the room hung a great tarnished chandelier that Ben Joe could almost have reached on tiptoe. He stared past it at the old people, but his grandmother looked fixedly at the chandelier, never letting her eyes move from it.
“Can I help you?” a nurse said. She had come up soundlessly on her thick-soled shoes, and now she faced them with her arms folded across the cardboard white of her uniform and her face strangely young and cheerful.
“We’ve come to visit a Mr. Dower,” Ben Joe said.
“Algernon Hector James Dower the Third,” said his grandmother, still looking intently at the chandelier.
“You members of his family?”
“Raised together.”
“Well, he’s not feeling too good. He’s a bed patient. If you’ll only stay a few minutes …”
“We’ll be quiet,” said Ben Joe.
“Follow me, then.”
She led them through the social room, toward an elevator around the corner. As they passed the other patients there was a whispering and a stirring, and everyone stared at them. “Mr. Dower,” the nurse told them. They nodded and kept staring. The nurse turned back to Ben Joe and his grandmother and gave them a sudden, reassuring smile; when she smiled, her nose wrinkled like a child’s and the spattering of freckles stood out in a little brown band across her face.
“If you’ll just step in here,” she said.
The elevator smelled dark and soapy. It was so small that it made Ben Joe nervous, and he could see that his grandmother was beginning to get that lost look on her face and was twisting her engagement ring. He smiled at her, and she cleared her throat and smiled back.
“Here we are,” the nurse said cheerfully.
The door slid open. Gram bounded out like a young goat, with a surprising little kick of her heels, and looked back at the nurse.
“My, I wish our people were as spry as you are!” the nurse said.
Gram smiled.
“Are those — those are very, um, sensible shoes you’re wearing,” the nurse went on pleasantly. “They must be—”
“I get them at Pearson’s Sport Shop,” Gram said.
“Ah, I see. Down this corridor, please.”
The corridor was very long and silent. It was hard to imagine that such an average-looking house could hold it all. The walls were covered with a heavy brown paper that had columns of palm leaves up and down it, and the doors were of some dark wood. At the next to the last door, which was slightly open, the nurse stopped and tapped lightly with her fingernails.
“Mr. Dower?” she called.
She peeked in, all smiles, and said, “We have company, Mr. Dower.”
Then she looked backed at Ben Joe and Gram and said, “You can come in. Don’t stay long, now. I’ll be out here when you want to go down again.”
They tiptoed in, Gram ahead of Ben Joe. Jamie Dower was lying in a spotless white iron bed, with his white hair fluffed out around his polished little face. His eyes were as alert as when Ben Joe had first seen him, but his breathing was worse; even when he was lying flat now, there was that squeaky kittenish sound that had been there when he’d climbed the hill.
“Oh, young man,” he said, recognizing Ben Joe.
“Hello, Mr. Dower.”
“Who is—”
Gram stepped forward. She had her hands folded primly in front of her and she looked very small and uncertain. For a long time she looked at Jamie Dower, taking in every change she must have seen in him. Then she dropped her hands and became brisk and lively, the way she always did at a sickbed. “I look familiar?” she asked him. She flounced over to sit on the edge of the chair beside his bed and smiled brightly at him. “I look like anyone you know, Jamie Dower?”
“A doctor—”
“Oh, no, no.” She twisted out of the white lab coat impatiently and flung it behind her. “Now?” she asked.
“Well, ma’am …”
“I’m Bethany Jane Chrisawn!” she caroled out loudly. The nurse came swiftly to the doorway and put one finger to her lips, but Gram was watching only Jamie Dower. “Now you remember?”
“Bethany …”He raised himself up on one elbow and stared at Gram puzzledly. For a minute Ben Joe held his breath; then the old man’s face slowly cleared and he said, “Bethany! Bethy Jay Chrisawn, that’s who!”
Ben Joe breathed again, and Gram nodded smugly.
“Bethy Jay!” the old man roared.
“Mr. Dower, please,” the nurse said.
“Well, I’ll be,” said Jamie Dower. He lay back down and shook his head as he stared at her. “Bethy,” he said, “you surely have changed some.”
Gram turned around and beamed at Ben Joe. “I told you,” she said. “Didn’t I? Before we even left the house I said to Ben Joe, I said, ‘I bet he won’t recognize me.’ This is Ben Joe Hawkes, Jamie. My grandson. He’s the one told me you were here.”
“I’m going,” the nurse called across to Ben Joe, barely mouthing the words. She trilled the fingers of one hand at him, gave him a warning look, and vanished.
“Never thought you’d still be alive,” Jamie said.
“Why, I’ll be! I’m younger’n you are.”
“Well, I know that. I know.”
He tried to sit up higher, and Gram reached behind him to pull the pillows up.
“You’re looking good, Jamie,” she said.
“That’s funny. View of the fact that I’m dying.”
“Oh, now, you’re not dying.”
“Don’t argue, Bethy Jay. Your word against the doctor’s and I’ll take the doctor’s any day. Yes sir, I’m dying and I come to die where I was born at, like any good man should. Not that I’d recognize the damn place.”
“Language, Jamie. You’re right, town has changed some.”
“Sure has. This your grandson, hey? You got married?”
“Well, of course I got married. What’d you think?” She sat up straighter and glared at him. “I married Lemuel Hawkes, that’s who.”