Christie’s hands came down. She’d been listening after all. ‘Eight years old?’
Richard nodded. ‘If that.’
‘Bomb ’em back to the Stone Age,’ Christie chirped. ‘That’s what Colonel Greene always says.’
‘We can’t,’ Richard said. ‘They’re living in the Stone Age.’
I was observing the couple openly now, but they were so engrossed in their own conversation that they didn’t seem to notice.
‘My skills as a medic went way beyond your average Afghan doctor,’ Richard said. ‘You know what they do for wounds?’
Christie shook her head.
‘Slop red dye all over it and hope.’
‘Did you have to treat the locals, too?’ Christie asked.
‘Damn straight. But even when they’re shot up or sick you can’t be sure they’re not wired up with explosives.’
Christie mewled. ‘It must be nerve-wracking to risk your life trying to save the life of someone who woke up that morning planning to kill you.’
‘That’s my point, Christie. The fewer Muslims there are the better it will be for the world.’
‘So you’re back now?’ Christie asked. ‘For good, I mean.’
‘I’m at Walter Reed,’ Richard began, ‘in the…’
‘Hannah? Hannah Ives?’
A pleasingly plump woman wearing a peach-colored suit and a nametag that read ‘Elaine Broering, Supervisor, Memory Unit,’ appeared at my elbow and introduced herself. ‘The receptionist pointed you out.’
My mental gears ground from fast forward into reverse as I tried to push Christie and Richard’s conversation out of my mind. ‘The man’s good,’ I said, referring to the pianist who had segued neatly from Perry Como and ‘Papa Loves Mambo’ into Leslie Gore’s ‘It’s My Party and I’ll Cry if I Want To.’
‘I agree completely. That’s Charlie Robinson. He volunteers here every Thursday afternoon. In his regular life he’s a building contractor, although you can sometimes catch his act out at Nordstrom, particularly during the holiday season.’
‘Love the tie,’ I commented. Robinson had shifted slightly on the piano bench and I could see that the red tie had Scottish terriers on it.
‘He has quite a collection,’ Elaine told me. ‘Last week he showed up wearing a tie that looked like a whole fish. On the Fourth of July it was the Statue of Liberty. The residents love it. The ties entertain them almost as much as his music.’
‘I’m getting a kick out of the couple on the sofa,’ I said, bobbing my head in their direction. ‘She plays the piano rather well, too.’
‘Ah, you must mean Jerry and Nancy – two of my favorite people. Hard not to smile when you’re around them. Until a month or so ago Nancy was on a walker, in physical therapy every day.’ She chuckled. ‘Don’t know why we bother with the PT now. Jerry seems to be just as effective.’
Charlie Robinson, flashing a Liberace-esque grin, segued into a hopping rendition of ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B.’ As we watched, Jerry sprang to his feet with a spryness that surprised me, hitched up his pants, straightened his bow tie, grabbed Nancy by the hand and led her onto the dance floor. Soon they were jiving like arthritic teenagers. When the tune changed to ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’ the couple barely paused, continuing a careful, but surprisingly sprightly two-step all around the lobby.
‘Aren’t you afraid they’re going to fall and hurt themselves?’ I asked.
‘Hah! I can see his obituary now: Jerry Wolcott, age eighty-eight, collapses and dies while doing the boogie woogie at a local retirement home. In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to the Welfare Fund for Aged Bankers.’ She snorted softly. ‘Frankly, I hope I go that way.’
‘Me, too, but I’d go out discoing to something by the Bee Gees.’
‘Chubby Checker, for me,’ she said, swiping her bangs out of her eyes. ‘Doing the twist.’
While I wondered whether Richard Kent was likely to be at Walter Reed as a patient or if he actually worked there, Elaine took me to her office, where she explained the typical duties of a volunteer, gave me background information on some of the residents, and a consent form to sign that said, basically, that if any of said residents decided to hit me over the head with a bedpan I was shit out of luck, lawsuit-wise. After a trip to Human Resources where I had my picture taken and was given a laminated clip-on name badge that identified me as an official volunteer, I was escorted back to the memory unit and given the combination to the door – 1632, the year Maryland was founded.
The memory unit was smaller and more intimate than the grand expanse of the main lobby, but handsome enough to qualify for its own spread in House Beautiful. There was nothing depressing about it. To my right was a small dining area that could seat a dozen diners; to my left, a comfortable lounge where several residents now sat, their backs to me, watching a rerun of I Love Lucy on a large, flat-screen TV mounted on the wall. A long corridor extended from where I stood near the entrance of the unit – which was secured with a push-button combination lock – to a double door at the far end. The corridor was carpeted with a short-napped broadloom with a unique design woven into the nap outside each resident’s door – flowers, stars and geometric shapes.
As I watched, a man emerged from his room and shuffled down the hallway, talking to himself. He let himself out through the double door at the opposite end.
I tapped Elaine’s arm. ‘He’s going outside.’
‘Not to worry. There’s a walled garden out there. Residents like to come and go as they please. He can’t stray far.’
We poked our heads into the lounge, where Elaine introduced me to one of the uniformed aides who was dressed in pale yellow scrubs stylish enough to have been designed by Ralph Lauren, if only his logo had been embroidered on the pocket. The aide was filling a bowl from a family-sized bag of Hershey’s miniatures. ‘Help yourself,’ she said after formal introductions were over.
I selected two semi-sweet chocolate bars and tucked them into my pocket. ‘Thanks.’
The familiar theme song for Gilligan’s Island drew my attention to the television and I noticed that the couple watching TV was Nancy and Jerry, who’d been tripping the light fantastic in the lounge only a couple of hours before. He kissed her cheek. She giggled.
‘Sweet,’ I whispered to Elaine. ‘I hope Paul and I will be so happily married when we’re that age.’
‘Oh, they aren’t married,’ Elaine explained. ‘At least, not to each other. Nancy has a husband up in Baltimore, but because of the Alzheimers and all he rarely visits anymore. Damn shame, really. He says, “What’s the point?” Tells us he’s “moved on with his life.”’ She drew quote marks in the air with her fingers and snorted her disapproval. ‘Jerry’s family is more attentive, but then they live right around the corner on East Lake. As I may have mentioned before, Jerry’s a retired banker. He’s been widowed for years.’
As I watched, feeling like a Peeping Tom, Jerry tipped up Nancy’s chin and kissed her full on the lips. ‘Doesn’t her husband mind?’ I asked.
‘He knows. Whatever keeps her happy, that’s what he tells us. If he doesn’t mind, I don’t know why anybody else should.’ We walked a bit further, heading for the room of a woman named Lillian Blake to whom I was supposed to read. ‘In nursing school,’ Elaine continued, ‘we learned that touch is the first sense to develop in the womb, and the last one to go before death. We can all benefit from a loving touch, no matter how out of it we appear.’
‘I saw Jerry and Nancy in the main lounge a couple of days ago, too,’ I said. ‘She was playing the piano, so I’m quite surprised to find that they live here, in the memory unit, I mean.’