Acquainted With The Night Part 4

MRS. SAUNDERS PLACED HER white plastic bag of garbage in one of the cans behind the row of garden apartments and looked about for a familiar face, but finding nothing except two unknown toddlers with a babysitter in the playground a short distance off, she shrugged, gazed briefly into the wan early spring sun, and climbed the stairs back to her own door. She was looking for someone because she had a pa.s.sion to hear her name spoken. But once inside, as she sponged her clean kitchen counter with concentrated elliptical strokes, she had to acknowledge that hearing "Mrs. Saunders" would not be good enough anymore. She needed-she had begun to long, in fact, with a longing she found frightening in its intensity-to hear her real name.

She squeezed the sponge agonizingly over the sink, producing a few meager drops. No one called her anything but Mrs. Saunders now. Her name was Fran. Frances. She whispered it in the direction of the rubber plant on the windowsill. Fran, Franny, Frances. Anyone seeing her, she thought, might suspect she was going crazy. Yet they said it was good to talk to your plants. She could always explain that she was whispering to them for their health and growth. Fran, Franny, Frances, she breathed again. Then she added a few wordless breaths, purely for the plants' sake, and felt somewhat less odd.

There was no one left to call her Fran. Her husband had called her Franny, but he was long dead. Her children, scattered across the country, called her Ma when they came at wide intervals to visit, or when she paid her yearly visit to each of the three. Except for Walter, she reminded herself, as she was fussy over accuracy, except for Walter, whom she saw only about once every year and a half, since he lived far away in Oregon and since his wife was what they called unstable and couldn't stand visitors too often or for too long a period.

Her old friends were gone or far off, and the new ones stuck to "Mrs. Saunders." The young people who moved in and out of these garden apartments thought of themselves as free and easy, she mused, but in fact they had their strange formalities, like always calling her Mrs. Saunders, even though they might run in two or three times a week to borrow groceries or ask her to babysit or see if she needed a lift to the supermarket. She pursed her lips in annoyance, regarded her impeccable living room, then pulled out the pack of cigarettes hidden in a drawer in the end table beside her chair. Mrs. Saunders didn't like these young girls who ran in and out to see her smoking; it wasn't seemly. She lit one and inhaled deeply, feeling a small measure of relief.

It wasn't that they were cold or unfriendly. Just that they didn't seem to realize she had a name like anyone else and might wish to hear it spoken aloud once in a while by someone other than herself in her darkened bedroom at night, or at full volume in the shower, mornings. And though she knew she could say to her new neighbors, "Call me Fran," as simply as that, somehow whenever the notion came to her the words got stuck in her throat. Then she lost the drift of the conversation and worried that the young people might think her strange, asking them to repeat things they had probably said perfectly clearly the first time. And if there was one thing she definitely did not want, she thought, stubbing the cigarette out firmly, it was to be regarded as senile. She had a long way to go before that.

Suddenly the air in the neat room seemed intolerably stuffy. Cigarette smoke hung in a cloud around her. Mrs. Saunders felt weak and terribly unhappy. She rose heavily and stepped out onto her small balcony for a breath of air. Jill was lounging on the next balcony with a friend.

"Oh, hi, Mrs. Saunders. How are you? Isn't it a gorgeous day?" Tall, blond, and narrow-shouldered, Jill drew in a lungful of smoke and pushed it out with pleasure.

"h.e.l.lo, Jill dear. How's everything?"

"Struggling along." Jill stretched out her long jean-clad legs till her feet rested on the railing. "Mrs. Saunders, this is my friend, Wendy. Wendy, Mrs. Saunders. Mrs. Saunders has been so terrific to us," she said to Wendy. "And she never complains about the kids screeching on the other side of the wall."

"Hi," said Wendy.

"Nice to meet you, Wendy," said Mrs. Saunders. "I don't mind the children, Jill, really I don't. After all, I had children of my own. I know what it's like."

"That's right. Three, aren't there?"

"Yes," Mrs. Saunders said. "Walter, Louise, and Edith. Walter was named after his father."

"We named Jeff after his father too," Wendy remarked.

"Mrs. Saunders sometimes babysits for Luke and Kevin," Jill explained to Wendy. "They adore her. Sometimes they even tell us to go out so she can come and stay with them. I don't know what it is you do with them, Mrs. Saunders."

She smiled, and would have liked to linger with the two young women, but suddenly she had to go in, because a furious sob rose in her throat, choking her. She threw herself down on the bed and wept uncontrollably into the plumped-up pillows. Everyone in the world had a name except her. And it would never change. n.o.body here, at this stage in her life, was going to come along and start calling her Fran. Franny, surely never again. She remembered the days-they were never far from her mind-when her husband was sick and dying in the bedroom upstairs in the old house, and fifteen, maybe twenty times a day she would hear his rasping, evaporating voice calling, "Franny, Franny." She would drop everything each time to see what it was he wanted, and although she had loved him deeply, there were moments when she felt if she heard that rasping voice wailing out her name once more she would scream in exasperation; her fists would clench with the power and the pa.s.sion to choke him. And yet now, wasn't life horribly cruel, she would give half her remaining days to hear her name wailed once more by him. Or by anyone else, for that matter. She gave in utterly to her despair and cried for a long time. She felt she might die gasping for breath if she didn't hear her own name.

At last she made an effort to pull herself together. She fixed the crumpled pillows so that they looked untouched, then went into the bathroom, washed her face and put on powder and lipstick, released her gray hair from its bun and brushed it out. It looked nice, she thought, long and still thick, thank G.o.d, falling down her back in a glossy, smooth sheet. Feeling young and girlish for a moment, she fancied herself going about with it loose and swinging, like Jill and Wendy and the other young girls. Jauntily she tossed her head to right and left a few times and reveled in the swing of her hair. As a matter of fact it was better hair than Jill's, she thought, thicker, with more body. Except it was gray. She gave a secretive smile to the mirror and pinned her hair up in the bun again. She would go into town and browse around Woolworth's to cheer herself up.

Mrs. Saunders got a ride in with Jill, who drove past the shopping center every noon on her way to get Luke and Kevin at nursery school. In Woolworth's she bought a new bathmat, a bottle of shampoo and some cream rinse for her hair, a butane cigarette lighter, and last, surprising herself, two boxes of colored chalk. She couldn't have explained why she bought the chalk, but since it only amounted to fifty-six cents she decided it didn't need justification. The colors looked so pretty, peeking out from the open circle in the center of the box-lime, lavender, rose, yellow, beige, and powder blue. It was spring, and they seemed to go with the spring. It occurred to her as she took them from the display case that the pale yellow was exactly the color of her kitchen cabinets; she might use it to cover a patch of white that had appeared on one drawer after she scrubbed too hard with Ajax. Or she might give Luke and Kevin each a box, and buy them slates as well, to practice their letters and numbers. They were nice little boys, and she often gave them small presents or candy when she babysat.

Feeling nonetheless as though she had done a slightly eccentric thing, Mrs. Saunders meandered through the shopping center, wondering if there might be some sensible, inexpensive thing she needed. Then she remembered that the shoes she had on were nearly worn out. Certainly she was ent.i.tled to some lightweight, comfortable new shoes for spring. With the a.s.sistance of a civil young man, she quickly was able to find just the right pair. The salesman was filling out the slip. "Name, please?" he said. And then something astonishing happened. Hearing so unexpectedly the word that had been obsessing her gave Mrs. Saunders a great jolt, and, as she would look back on it later, seemed to loosen and shake out of its accustomed place a piece of her that rebelled against the suffocation she had been feeling for more years than she cared to remember.

She knew exactly the answer that was required, so that she could find rea.s.surance afterwards in recalling that she had been neither mad nor senile. As the clerk waited with his pencil poised, the thing that was jolted loose darted swiftly through her body, producing vast exhilaration, and rose out from her throat to her lips.

"Frances."

She expected him to look at her strangely-it was strange, she granted that-and say, "Frances what?" And then, at long last she would hear it. It would be, she imagined, something like making love years ago with Walter, when in the dark all at once her body streamed and compressed to one place and exploded with relief and wonder. She felt a tinge of that same excitement now, as she waited. And it did not concern her that the manner of her gratification would be so pathetic and contrived, falling mechanically from the lips of a stranger. All that mattered was that the name be spoken.

"Last name, please." He did not even look up.

Mrs. Saunders gave it, and gave her address, and thought she would faint with disappointment. She slunk from the store and stood weakly against a brick wall outside. Was there to be no easing of this pain? Dazed, she stared hopelessly at her surroundings, which were sleek, buzzing with shoppers, and unappealing. She slumped and turned her face to the wall.

On the brick before her, in small letters, were scratched the words "Tony" and "Annette." An arrow went through them. Mrs. Saunders gazed for a long time, aware that she would be late meeting Jill, but not caring, for once. She broke the staple on the Woolworth's bag, slipped her hand in, and drew out a piece of chalk. It turned out to be powder blue. Shielding her actions with her coat, she printed in two-inch-high letters on the brick wall outside the shoe store, FRANNY. Then she moved off briskly to the parking lot.

At home, after fixing herself a light lunch, which she ate excitedly and in haste, and washing the few dishes, she went back down to the garbage area behind the buildings. In lavender on the concrete wall just behind the row of cans, she wrote FRANNY. A few feet off she wrote again, FRANNY, and added WALTER, with an arrow through the names. But surveying her work, she took a tissue from her pocket and with some difficulty rubbed out WALTER and the arrow. Walter was dead. She was not senile yet. She was not yet one of those old people who live in a world of illusions.

Then she went to the children's playground, deserted at nap-time, and wrote FRANNY in small letters on the wooden rail of the slide, on the wooden pillars of the newfangled jungle gym, and on the concrete border of the sandbox, in yellow, lavender, and blue, respectively. Choosing a quite private corner behind some benches, she crouched down and wrote the six letters of her name, using a different color for each letter. She regarded her work with a fierce, proud elation, and decided then and there that she would not, after all, give the chalk to Luke and Kevin. She was not sure, in fact, that she would ever give them anything else again.

The next week was a busy and productive one for Mrs. Saunders. She carried on her usual round of activities-shopping, cooking, cleaning her apartment daily, and writing to Walter, Louise, and Edith; evenings she babysat or watched television, and once attended a tenants' meeting on the subject of limited s.p.a.ce for guest parking, though she possessed neither a car nor guests; she went to the bank to cash her social security check, as well as to a movie and to the dentist for some minor repair work on her bridge. But in addition to all this she went to the shopping center, three times with Jill at noon, where, using caution, she managed to adorn several sidewalks and walls with her name.

She was not at all disturbed when Jill asked, "Anything special that you're coming in so often for, Mrs. Saunders? If it's anything I could do for you ...

"Oh, no, Jill dear." She laughed. "I'd be glad if you could do this for me, believe me. It's my bridge." She pointed to her teeth. "I've got to keep coming, he says, for a while longer, or else leave it with him for a few weeks, and then what would I do? I'd scare the children."

"Oh, no. Never that, Mrs. Saunders. Is it very painful?" Jill swerved around neatly into a parking s.p.a.ce.

"Not at all. Just a nuisance. I hope you don't mind-"

"Don't be ridiculous, Mrs. Saunders. What are friends for?"

That day she was more busy than ever, for she had not only to add new FRANNYs but to check on the old. There had been a rainstorm over the weekend, which obliterated her name from the parking lot and the sidewalks. Also, a few small shopkeepers, specifically the butcher and the baker, evidently cleaned their outside walls weekly. She told Jill not to pick her up, for she might very likely be delayed, and as it turned out, she was. The constant problem of not being noticed was time-consuming, especially in the parking lot with its endless flow of cars in and out. Finished at last, she was amazed to find it was past two-thirty. Mrs. Saunders was filled with the happy exhaustion of one who has accomplished a decent and useful day's work. Looking about and wishing there were a comfortable place to rest for a while, she noticed that the window she was leaning against belonged to a paint store. Curious, she studied the cans and color charts. The colors were beautiful: vivid reds, blues, golds, and violets, infinitely more beautiful than her pastels. She had never cared much for pastels anyway. With a sly, physical excitement floating through her, Mrs. Saunders straightened up and entered.

She knew something about spray paint. Sukie, Walter's wife, had sprayed the kitchen chairs with royal blue down in the cellar last time Mrs. Saunders visited, nearly two years ago. She remembered it well, for Sukie, her hair, nose, and mouth covered with scarves, had called out somewhat harshly as Mrs. Saunders came down the steps, "For G.o.d's sake, stay away from it. It'll choke you. And would you mind opening some windows upstairs so when I'm done I can breathe?" Sukie was not a welcoming kind of girl. Mrs. Saunders sighed, then set her face into a smile for the paint salesman.

As she left the store contentedly with a shopping bag on her arm, she heard the insistent beep of a car horn. It was Jill. "Mrs. Saunders, hop in," she called. "I had a conference with Kevin's teacher," Jill explained, "and then the mothers' meeting to plan the party for the end of school, and after I dropped the kids at Wendy's I thought maybe I could still catch you."

Jill looked immensely pleased with her good deed, Mrs. Saunders thought, just as Louise and Edith used to look when they fixed dinner on her birthday, then sat beaming with achievement and waiting for praise, which she always gave in abundance.

"Isn't that sweet of you, Jill." But she was not as pleased as she tried to appear, for she had been looking forward to the calm bus ride and to privately planning when and where to use her new purchases. "You're awfully good to me."

"Oh, it's nothing, really. Buying paint?"

"Yes, I've decided to do the kitchen and bathroom."

"But they'll do that for you. Every two years. If you're due you just call the landlord and say so."

"But they don't use the colors I like and I thought it might be nice to try. ..."

"It's true, they do make you pay a lot extra for colors," Jill said thoughtfully.

Mrs. Saunders studied the instructions on the cans carefully, and went over in her mind all the advice the salesman had given her. Late that evening after the family noises in the building had subsided, she took the can of red paint down to the laundry room in the bas.e.m.e.nt. She also took four quarters and a small load of wash-the paint can was buried under the wash-in case she should meet anyone. She teased herself about this excessive precaution at midnight, but as it happened she did meet one of the young mothers, Nancy, pulling overalls and polo shirts out of the dryer.

"Oh, Mrs. Saunders! I was frightened for a minute. I didn't expect anyone down here so late. So you're another night owl, like me.

"h.e.l.lo, Nancy. I meant to get around to this earlier, but it slipped my mind." She took the items out of her basket slowly, one by one, wishing Nancy would hurry.

"Since I took this part-time job I spend all my evenings doing housework. Sometimes I wonder if it's worth it." At last Nancy had the machine emptied. "Do you mind staying all alone? I could wait." She hesitated in the doorway, clutching her basket to her chest, pale and plainly exhausted.

"Oh no, Nancy dear. I don't mind at all, and anyhow, you look like you need some rest. Go on and get to sleep. I'll be fine."

She inserted her quarters and started the machine as Nancy disappeared. The clothes were mostly clean; she had grabbed any old thing to make a respectable-looking load. The extra washing wouldn't hurt them. With a tingling all over her skin and an irrepressible smile, she unsealed the can. Spraying was much easier than she had expected. The F, which she put on the wall behind the washer, took barely any time and effort. Paint dripped thickly from its upper left corner, though, indicating she had pressed too hard and too long. It was simple to adjust the pressure, and by the second N she felt quite confident, as if she had done this often before. She took a few steps back to look it over. It was beautiful-bold, thick, and bright against the cream-colored wall. So beautiful that she did another directly across the room. Then on the inside of the open door, rarely seen, she tried it vertically; aside from some long amateurish drips, she was delighted at the effect. She proceeded to the boiler room, where she sprayed FRANNY on the boiler and on the wall, then decided she had done enough for one night. Waiting for the laundry cycle to end, she was surrounded by the red, l.u.s.trous reverberations of her name, vibrating across the room at each other; she felt warmed and strengthened by the firm, familiar walls of her own self. While the room filled and teemed with visual echoes of FRANNY, Mrs. Saunders became supremely at peace.

She climbed the stairs slowly, adrift in this happy glow. She would collect her things from the dryer late tomorrow morning. Lots of young mothers and children would have been in and out by then. Nancy was the only one who could suspect, but surely Nancy didn't come down with a load every day; besides, she was so tired and hara.s.sed she probably wouldn't remember clearly. Mrs. Saunders entered her apartment smiling securely with her secret.

Yet new difficulties arose over the next few days. The deserted laundry room at night was child's play compared to the more public, open, and populated areas of the development. Mrs. Saunders finally bought a large tote bag in Woolworth's so she could carry the paint with her and take advantage of random moments of solitude. There were frequent lulls when the children's playground was empty, but since it was in full view of the balconies and rear windows, only once, at four-thirty on a Wednesday morning, did she feel safe, working quickly and efficiently to complete her name five times. The parking lot needed to be done in the early hours too, as well as the front walk and the wall s.p.a.ce near the mailboxes. It was astonishing, she came to realize, how little you could rely on being un.o.bserved in a suburban garden apartment development, unless you stayed behind your own closed door.

Nevertheless, she did manage to get her name sprayed in half a dozen places, and she took to walking around the grounds on sunny afternoons to experience the fairly delirious sensation of her ident.i.ty, secretly yet miraculously out in the open, sending humming rays towards her as she moved along. Wherever she went she encountered herself. Never in all her life had she had such a potent sense of occupying and making an imprint on the world around her. The reds and blues and golds seemed even to quiver and heighten in tone as she approached, as if in recognition and tribute, but this she knew was an optical illusion. Still, if only they could speak. Then her joy and fulfillment would be complete. After her walks she sat in her apartment and smoked and saw behind her closed eyes parades of brilliantly colored FRANNYs move along in the darkness, and felt entranced as with the warmth of a soothing physical embrace. Only once did she have a moment of unease, when she met Jill on her way back in early one morning.

"Mrs. Saunders, did anything happen? What's the red stuff on your fingers?"

"Just nail polish, dear. I spilled some."

Jill glanced at her unpolished nails and opened her mouth to speak, but apparently changed her mind.

"Fixing a run in a stocking," Mrs. Saunders added as she carried her shopping bag inside. She sensed potential danger in that meeting, yet also enjoyed a thrill of defiance and a deep, faint flicker of expectation.

Then one evening Harris, Jill's husband, knocked on Mrs. Saunders' door to tell her there would be a tenants' meeting tomorrow night in the community room.

"You must have noticed," he said, "the way this place has been deteriorating lately. I mean, when we first moved in four years ago it was brand-new and they took care of it. Now look! First of all there's this graffiti business. You must've seen it, haven't you? Every kid and his brother have got their names outside-it's as bad as the city. Of course that Franny character takes the cake, but the others are running her a close second. Then the garbage isn't removed as often as it used to be, the mailboxes are getting broken, there's been a light out for weeks in the hall. ... I could go on and on."

She was afraid he would, too, standing there leaning on her doorframe, large and comfortably settled. Harris was an elementary-school teacher; Mrs. Saunders guessed he was in the habit of making long speeches. She smiled and wondered if she ought to ask him in, but she had left a cigarette burning in the ashtray. In fact she had not noticed the signs of negligence that Harris mentioned, but now that she heard, she was grateful for them. She felt a trifle weak in the knees; the news of the meeting was a shock. If he didn't stop talking soon she would ask him in just so she could sit down, cigarette or no cigarette.

"Anyhow," Harris continued, "I won't keep you, but I hope you'll come. The more partic.i.p.ation, the better. There's power in numbers."

"Yes, I'll be there, Harris. You're absolutely right."

"Thanks, Mrs. Saunders. Good night." She was starting to close the door when he abruptly turned back. "And by the way, thanks for the recipe for angel food cake you gave Jill. It was great."

"Oh, I'm glad, Harris. You're quite welcome. Good night, now."

Of course she would go. Her absence would be noted, for she always attended the meetings, even those on less crucial topics. Beneath her surface nervousness the next day, Mrs. Saunders was aware of an abiding calm. Buoyed up by her name glowing almost everywhere she turned, she felt strong and impregnable as she took her seat in the community room.

"Who the h.e.l.l is Franny anyway?" asked a man from the neighboring unit. "She started it all. Anyone here got a kid named Franny?" One woman had a Frances, but, she said, giggling, her Frances was only nine months old. Mrs. Saunders felt a throb of alarm in her chest. But she soon relaxed: the nameplates on her door and mailbox read "Saunders" only, and her meager mail, even the letters from Walter, Louise, and Edith, she had recently noticed, was all addressed to Mrs. F. Saunders or Mrs. Walter Saunders. And of course, since these neighbors had never troubled to ask. ... She suppressed a grin. You make your own bed, she thought, watching them, and you lie in it.

The talk shifted to the broken mailboxes, the uncollected garbage, the inadequacy of guest parking, and the poor TV reception, yet every few moments it returned to the graffiti, obviously the most chafing symptom of decay. To Mrs. Saunders the progress of the meeting was haphazard, without direction or goal. As in the past, people seemed more eager to air their grievances than to seek a practical solution. But she conceded that her experience of community action was limited; perhaps this was the way things got done. In any case, their collective obtuseness appeared a more than adequate safeguard, and she remained silent. She always remained silent at tenants' meetings-no one would expect anything different of her. She longed for a cigarette, and inhaled deeply the smoke of others' drifting around her.

At last-she didn't know how it happened for she had ceased to pay attention-a committee was formed to draft a pet.i.tion to the management listing the tenants' complaints and demanding repairs and greater surveillance of the grounds. The meeting was breaking up. They could relax, she thought wryly, as she milled about with her neighbors, moving to the door. She had done enough painting for now anyway. She smiled with cunning and some contempt at their innocence of the vandal in their midst. Certainly, if it upset them so much she would stop. They did have rights, it was quite true.

She walked up with Jill. Harris was still downstairs with the other members of the small committee which he was, predictably, chairing.

"Well, it was a good meeting," Jill said. "I only hope something comes out of it."

"Yes," said Mrs. Saunders vaguely, fumbling for her key in the huge, heavy tote bag.

"By the way, Mrs. Saunders ..." Jill hesitated at her door and nervously began brushing the wispy hair from her face. "I've been meaning to ask, what's your first name again?"

In her embarra.s.sment Jill was blinking childishly and didn't know where to look. Mrs. Saunders felt sorry for her. In the instant before she replied-and Mrs. Saunders didn't break the rhythm of question and answer by more than a second's delay-she grasped fully that she was sealing her own isolation as surely as if she had bricked up from inside the only window in a cell.

"Faith," she said.

The longing she still woke with in the dead of night, despite all her work, would never now be eased. But when, in that instant before responding, her longing warred with the rooted habits and needs of a respectable lifetime, she found the longing no match for the life. And that brief battle and its outcome, she accepted, were also, irrevocably, who Franny was.

The profound irony of this turn of events seemed to loosen some old, stiff knot in the joints of her body. Feeling the distance and wisdom of years rising in her like sap released, she looked at Jill full in the face with a vast, unaccustomed compa.s.sion. The poor girl could not hide the relief that spread over her, like the pa.s.sing of a beam of light.

"Isn't it funny, two years and I never knew," she stammered. "All that talk about names made me curious, I guess." Finally Jill turned the key in her lock and smiled over her shoulder. "Okay, good night, Mrs. Saunders. See you tomorrow night, right? The boys are looking forward to it."

THE WRATH-BEARING TREE.

"SIX-TWO-FOUR AVENUE D?" the old man asks me. He clutches at my wrist with k.n.o.bby fingers. "Six-two-four Avenue D?"

"I'm very sorry. I can't help you."

"Come on, don't pay any attention," my father mutters impatiently, pulling at my other arm. We proceed. Behind my back the old man whimpers to a woman by his side, "No one wants to help me.

"That's the way it is with these young people. They won't give you the time of day."

Anger and guilt rise in me simultaneously like twin geysers. I hastily prepare two lines of defense, one to a.s.suage the guilt, the other to justify the anger. Number one, he's already asked me three times today. Number two, I have enough troubles of my own.

I am taking my father for a stroll down the hospital corridor, our arms linked at the elbow like a happy couple on a date. An intrusive third wheel is the IV tube dangling from its chrome stand, a coatrack come to life. My father is here in order to die. Even now, terminally ill, he walks very fast, he runs.

The old man, the one searching for 624 Avenue D, is the spectacle of the floor. Ambulatory, he spends long hours in the waiting room, where he occasionally urinates on the floor. Also, from time to time he exposes himself, spreading wide the folds of his white cotton gown with a quick flapping like a gull's wings. This is disconcerting to new visitors, but my sister and I merely smile now, humoring him. We have found that a brief, friendly acknowledgment will satisfy him for the day. Between ourselves we call him the flasher, and giggle. "How's the flasher today?" "Not bad. He looked a little pale, though." Having seen his private parts so often, I feel on intimate terms with him, like family. He is not really annoying except when he gets on one of his 624 Avenue D jags, lasting for two or three days, after which he returns to simple urinating and self-exposure.

My father, thank G.o.d, would never expose himself. The humiliation. As a child I once accidentally glimpsed a patch of his pubic hair; he looked as though he might faint with shock when he saw me in the room. My father, thank G.o.d, is in full possession of his mental faculties. Just yesterday he gave a philosophical disquisition, shortly after taking a painkiller. "There are times," he said, "when the mere absence of pain is a positive pleasure." He paused, and swallowed with difficulty. We could see his throat muscles straining. "That is," he went on, "under certain extreme conditions a negative quality can become a positive one." My heart swelled with love and pride. Isn't he smart, my father? He cannot resist saying things twice, though, that is, paraphrasing himself, a trait I have inherited. I think it comes from a conviction of intellectual superiority, that is, an expectation of inferior intelligence in one's listeners.

"Six-two-four Avenue D?" The old man looms up, having padded in on soundless feet, before my sister and me in the waiting room.

"I think it's the other way," I say gently. "Try that way." He shuffles towards the door. My sister and I are chain-smoking and giggling, making up nasty surmises about the patients and their visitors.

"That one will probably put a.r.s.enic in her grandma's tea the day she gets home." She points to a young girl with long gold earrings and tattered jeans, who is speaking sternly about proper diet to an old woman in a wheelchair.

I nod and glance across the room at a fat, blue-haired woman wearing a flowered, wrinkled cotton housedress. "Couldn't she find anything better to visit the hospital in? He might drop dead just looking at her."

We giggle some more. "How did the Scottish woman's kidney operation go?"

"All right. They took it out. She'll need dialysis."

"At least she's okay." We lower our eyes gravely. We like the Scottish woman. There is a long silence.

"Norman died last night," she says at last.

"Oh, really. Well ..." This is not a surprise. Norman was yellow-green for two weeks and wheeled about morosely, telling his visitors he was not long for this world. He convinced everyone and turned out to be right. "That's too bad. He was nice."