The front door was an imposing barrier of green-painted metals and bulletproof glass, and it was locked. Bob buzzed a doorbell-buzzer and the door buzzed back, unlocked itself with a clack, and swung slowly open. Chip walked in under her own steam, disappearing around a corner while Bob stood by, waiting for someone to come meet him at the threshold; but there was no one, and after a long, ponderous pause, the door began evenly closing. He was about to turn and go when a bellowing male voice from behind hailed him: “Hold that door!” The voice beheld so pure a conviction that Bob reacted without thinking, blocking the sweep with his right foot, which consequently was smashed by such a force of violence that his pain was only barely concealable. The door bounced back and again was swinging open. Meanwhile, the voice’s owner, an abnormally large, that is, tall, broad, wide man in an abnormally large electronic wheelchair, was bearing down on Bob at a high rate of speed and with a look of steely certitude in his bloodshot eyes. As he whizzed past Bob and into the center he pinched the brim of an abnormally large beret in a salute of thanks. The same instant this man entered, there came a call from unseen voices, a calamitous, jeering greeting, a joyful commencement of an earlier communication, as though some new evidence gathered overnight had altered a prior dispute. “Pup pup pup,” the man said, wagging his mitt of a hand to downplay the noise. He drove his chair deeper into the center proper.
A forty-something-year-old woman in pale green scrubs and a beige cardigan was walking up to meet Bob. She asked if there was anything she could help him with and Bob explained about his bringing Chip back. The woman nodded that she understood, but she wasn’t noticeably impressed that Chip had been at large, or that she had been safely reinstalled. She introduced herself as Maria and Bob said he was Bob. When the door began closing, Maria stepped back, hand held aloft in a gesture of neutral farewell; but here Bob both surprised himself and Maria by hop-limping into the center, and afterward stood lightly panting, while Maria considered whether to call for security.
BOB LIKED MARIA INSTANTLY. SHE SEEMED SLY TO THE WORLD’S foolishness, something like a cat’s attitude of critical doubtfulness, but she also beheld a cat’s disposition of: surprise me. Bob could tell that she was tired, physically and emotionally; her hair still was wet from her shower, he noticed. She asked Bob what was wrong with his foot and he told her, “Your front door smashed it,” and she said, “I see.” She asked if he was well enough for a tour of the center and he said he was, and she led him to the airy space she called the Great Room. In the middle of the room was a long table around which sat a dozen or more senior men and women, some chatting volubly, others sitting with their heads bowed to the gentle labors of unskilled craft projects, others sleeping, chin to chest. The man in the wheelchair was nowhere in sight, but Chip was sitting at the head of the table, apart from the others, breathing through her mouth, and still with Bob’s coat hanging off her shoulders. Bob pointed this out to Maria, who approached Chip from behind to retrieve the garment. This took some good bit of pulling but finally Maria managed to yank the coat free, and she crossed over to return it to Bob. He thanked her but didn’t put the coat on right away, wanting Chip’s body warmth to dissipate before he wore it again.
He and Maria resumed their promenade. “So, that’s Chip. She’s a free bird. Runs away as often as she can. Luckily, she never runs very far, or very quickly. Half the time we don’t know she’s gone, then there’s someone at the door, like you, bringing her back home.”
Bob asked how the center could house so many individuals as were present; Maria answered there were only five residents, and that the rest were shuttled to the center each morning, then shuttled back to their homes after suppertime. Most of them lived with their adult children, or relatives. Maria explained that these were people without insurance or savings, people who couldn’t afford full-time care.
“Chip’s one of the residents?”
“For now she is. To be honest, she needs more from us than we can give her. We’re lucky to have this house at our disposal but it’s poorly suited to our needs when it comes to the complicated cases. We’re understaffed and underfunded and all the rest of it. Chip needs more focused care in a secured environment. The ideal from our point of view and according to what we can offer is someone more like Brighty, here. How are you, Brighty?”
Bob found himself shaking hands, or found his hand being shaken by the woman, Brighty. She stared hard at Bob but spoke to Maria. “Who’s this? A new face? New blood? What’s his story?”
Maria said, “This is Bob, Brighty. He was good enough to bring Chip back to us, so I thought I’d show him around.”
“Okay, that all makes sense, but where does he live?”
“I don’t know. Where do you live, Bob?”
“I live in a house in northeast.”
“Sounds plush,” Brighty told Maria.
“It’s all right,” said Bob.
“He’s modest. I’m sure it’s very plush and classy. His wife must be pleased with her — fortunate situation.”
Bob said, “I have no wife.”
Now Brighty looked at Bob. “Why not?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t. I did have one, once.”
“And one was enough?”
“It must have been.”
“You’re a widower?”
“Divorcé,” said Bob.
“And when were you granted — your freedom?”
Bob did some quick addition. “Forty-five years ago.”
Brighty made to whistle, but the whistle didn’t catch and so was more a puffing noise.
Maria said, “Brighty has been married five times, Bob.”
“What do you think about that?” Brighty asked Bob.
“I think that’s a lot of times to be married,” Bob answered.
“I like a big party, is what it is,” said Brighty. “And I’ll take a wedding over a funeral any day of any week, if it’s all the same to you.” She walked off to a bank of mismatched couches lining the long wall of the Great Room, sat down, leaned her head back, and shut her eyes. “Brighty,” Maria told Bob. Bob noticed Chip was no longer in her chair but had taken up a standing position next to the front door, looking at it but not looking at it. He mentioned Chip’s movements to Maria, who sighed and led him to the far corner of the Great Room where a scowling woman sitting at a fold-up card table was working on a thousand-piece puzzle. She had stringy, unclean gray hair, and she wore a pair of reading glasses on top of her regular glasses. “This is Jill,” said Maria. “Jill’s one of our nonresident visitors. Jill, will you say hello to our new friend Bob? I won’t be a minute.” She excused herself to fetch Chip away from the front door. Jill, meanwhile, was staring up at Bob, who told her, “Hi.” She didn’t respond. When Bob asked how she was doing she raised her hands up in the style of a doctor who has just scrubbed in ahead of surgery, each finger standing alone, with space between itself and its siblings. “I can’t feel my thumbs,” she said.