My name is Julian Pappas.
I live at 106 Atherton Drive in the town of Sheboygan, state of Wisconsin.
I am eighty-nine years old.
It is 2015.
My name is Julian Pappas.
Becky has phoned Leander, who is on his way over to the house. I have a few minutes to collect my thoughts, and that is all. I missed Becky’s phone call. I heard the ringing, but it had stopped by the time I got inside and found the phone – which is not, I have to remind myself, that familiar boxy beige device that once hung on the kitchen wall.
When Leander arrives, he will want to have The Talk with me. I need to be careful not to mention the kitchen chair which appeared last night in front of the toilet, before somehow returning to its proper place in the morning. And obviously I cannot tell him that I found my cell phone on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator, sitting on top of the egg carton. The phone is still in my hand, suspiciously cold. Leander needs to know none of this.
I also need to remember that I have promised to call Becky with a report, after Leander has come and gone. So many things to remember. Thea used to make lists. I was never one to make lists for myself, leaving the organizational affairs to my wife. But I can see how it would not be such a bad idea.
I sit down on the recliner and wait, the cell phone slowly warming in my hand. A few minutes pass before I hear Leander’s car pull up in front of the house. The door opens.
Dad? Are you here?
Leander is not in the habit of knocking, which is fine. I have nothing to hide from my son. Other than things like the chair in the bathroom and the phone in the refrigerator.
Leander finds me before I can answer. I wish that I had thought to pick up a magazine so it would appear that I am simply sitting and reading, but it is too late for that now.
You didn’t need to come over, I say. I told Becky she shouldn’t have bothered you. I was outside when the phone rang. That’s all.
Leander shakes his head as if he knows better. We have had these conversations before, and I think we are getting to the end of whatever routine this is.
I called Tessa on my way over. She’s driving up this morning and she’s picking up Becky on the way. We need to have a talk, Dad.
I am not sure what to make of this. Leander and Sarah would like for me to move into a nursing home. They call it a retirement community, but I visited one of these places and it was a retirement community in the same way that McDonald’s is a restaurant. Old people with vacant expressions shuffling down the hallways. A vague cherry-vanilla scent failing to mask other, less pleasant odors. Attendants smiling grimly at me, as if they are saying: We will see you again. Tessa would like for me to stay in the house, but she lives two hours away and cannot easily drop in to check on me. So Leander has worked his slow persuasions on his sister, and her loyalties are now suspect. Becky has always been my greatest ally. I cannot imagine that she will go along with Leander’s plan. But the three of them will descend on the house today, together, so I have no idea what to expect. My anxiety level is high.
Is Robert coming? I ask. As soon as I say it, I have a sudden moment of clarity and I wish that I could un-say it.
Why do you say that, Dad? Why are you asking about Robert?
I shake my head and look out the window. I don’t like Robert, I say. But of course Robert and Tessa have been divorced for twelve years. Robert is living and working in New York City. He has a new wife that no one in our family has met. I know that the woman is fifteen years his junior and that she does not work outside of the house, but I do not even know her name. Or if I once knew it, I do not remember it. Along with a new wife, Robert has two new children. I think one is a boy and one is a girl, but I could be mistaken about that. Becky and Kat have no contact with their father. They visited him once, in his New York apartment, years ago, together. But he is no longer involved in their lives, and Becky at least has no interest in rekindling the relationship. So my asking if Robert will be coming obviously made no sense.
I know he’s in New York, I say weakly. I know that he and your sister are divorced. I know he’s not coming.
Leander sighs and decides, apparently, to let the matter drop. Although I suspect that he has filed my question away in his head, should he need to bring it out when Tessa and Becky get here for The Talk.
Leander tells me that he will need to open the restaurant at eleven, but he has people who can handle the lunch service so he will be back by the time his sister arrives from Elmhurst. In the meantime, he suggests that I lay down and try to nap. He thinks that I look tired. I want to tell him that, if I appear tired, it is because life is exhausting. If I had known that I would outlive Thea by more than twenty years, that I will be ninety years old next summer and am facing the prospect of being moved into a nursing home for however many years I have left, I would have done things differently. Maybe I would have moved in with Becky. After the wedding, she and Will offered to look for a place with an in-law suite – a place where I could live independently, until I could not. Maybe I would have moved to Naxos, built a little place near Alexandros’ olive orchard, helped him at harvest time, sat on the cliff and watched the sunrise, waited for my heart to stop beating. Better yet, I might have arranged my exit to coincide with Thea’s. I do not know exactly how this could have been arranged. But I am sure that, even then, there were certain ways.
Leander leaves, but I do not go back to the bedroom. I do not try to nap. I am still holding the phone in my hand when I remember that I am supposed to call Becky.
Mom says she’s coming to pick me up and then we’re coming to Sheboygan, she tells me.
That’s what I understand.
It will be nice to see you, Grandpa.
I am trying to decipher something in her tone, without success.
I wish you could live in Milwaukee with me and Will and the boys. That’s what I wish.
You don’t need that, honey. You all have your lives.
Becky says nothing for a long time. I think maybe I have lost her as an ally. That makes me sad, but as good as she has been to me, for so many years, I cannot blame my granddaughter. I still think of Becky as a girl. The child who demanded to know all about Greece, about her ancestors. The child who sat for hours at my wife’s bedside, reading to her. The girl who should have married Andrew and lived in Farsala, although I cannot fault her for marrying a kind and decent medical student named William Larkin and settling in Milwaukee. The child who taught me how to use a computer and with whom I exchanged a thousand messages over a thousand days. This is the child my mind seems to want to hold onto, although the flesh-and-blood Becky Larkin is thirty-seven years old, fifteen years a wife, mother to two boys.
Around eleven-thirty, Leander returns. I am relieved to see that he is alone. Sarah is, as far as I know, at home this week. Apparently Leander believes that he can handle this situation without his wife’s support. I am sitting in the same chair, wearing the same clothes, as when he departed – which might lead my son to think that I have not moved since he left the house. But none of that matters.
It is another hour before Tessa and Becky arrive. Uncharacteristically, Tessa is wearing jeans and an oversized black pullover, looking as if she ran out of the house in a hurry. Becky is dressed in black slacks and a white blouse – one of her conservative schoolteacher uniforms, as she commonly refers to the outfits she has taken to wearing to school, against her natural impulses. Becky has followed her mother into the teaching profession, although Becky has always seemed to treat the job as a kind of obligation to the universe at large rather than a simple vocation. She teaches sixth graders at an inner city school in Milwaukee. Nicholas and I were generally well-behaved boys, but I remember sixth grade as a restless age, and I certainly cannot imagine that the world, and especially inner-city Milwaukee, presents fewer challenges today.
I lift myself from my recliner, walk across the room and give my daughter and granddaughter a hug.
Dad. Tessa steps back and inspects me. How are you? You’re feeling OK?
Becky gives her mother an exasperated look. Stop it, Mom. Just stop it.
I can see that their arrival at the house must have followed a long, stressful discussion between mother and daughter. Tessa sets her jaw, says nothing.
It is my role, I suppose, to put Leander and Tessa and Becky at ease in my house. But we all know the purpose of this visit, and I leave it to my children to initiate the conversation. And after some transparent small talk, Leander gets to it.
I know you’re not thrilled about some of the retirement communities in Sheboygan, Dad. I’m not thrilled either. Tessa has looked at places down where she is and she isn’t thrilled about any of them. So.
I wait. If my kids have rehearsed this, it is now Tessa’s turn to talk.
So why are we here? Becky asks. Her belligerence feels reassuring. She gives her mother a hard look. Why are we even here? Is it because Grandpa didn’t pick up the phone right away and I called Uncle Leander?
Tessa shakes her head. That isn’t it, honey. You know that isn’t it. But Grandpa can’t stay in this house forever. We need to come up with some alternatives, because this isn’t working.
I do feel bad for my kids, for having put them in this predicament. I have tried to live as independently as possible, and I have tried to keep some of my more egregious episodes private. The chair in the bathroom. The phone in the refrigerator. Those are small, harmless things. Almost comical, in their way. Other incidents were not so inconsequential. Leaving the burner on when I went for one of my afternoon walks, and doing it again a month later. Driving to the lighthouse and forgetting how to get home. Coming into the house after a trip to the grocery store and leaving the car idling in the street, discovering it the next morning, the battery drained and the gas gauge on empty. Worst of all, having to wait in the Walmart manager’s office for the police to arrive because I had apparently been seen pocketing batteries, for which I had no use. One of the clerks had recognized me and called Leander, who arrived just ahead of the police. I thanked the clerk for intervening, but it was a mixed blessing.
I think we should try having Grandpa move in with me and Will, Becky proposes. Just for a couple of weeks. So we could see how it goes. He could really help out with the boys.
Leander shakes his head. We’re not talking about two-week solutions, Becky. We need to talk about your grandpa being in a place where he’s safe and where he’s cared for.
I can see that Becky is fighting back tears. You’re talking about him like he’s not even here. You and mom too. He’s sitting right there.
I feel the most overpowering sense of protection toward my granddaughter. Becky has been brought here, I can only presume, to bear witness to whatever decisions her mother and uncle have already made. She is fighting on my behalf, and I am saying nothing to help her, nothing to turn the conversation. All I want now is for Tessa and Leander to tell me what they have decided to do with me, so this visit can end and everyone else can go back to living their own lives.
Tessa leans over, places her hands on my knees. Dad, I think maybe we’ve found a place that will work for everyone. Especially you.
Images of vacant-eyed residents wandering down hallways, distracted attendants, strange odors – they all return to me. I do not want to hear the words retirement community from my daughter’s mouth. I cannot abide that indignity, that betrayal.
You already said the places here and the places around Elmhurst were crappy, Becky reminds her mother.
I didn’t say crappy. But there is a place in Milwaukee that seems different. Better.
For a moment, Becky is at a loss for words. Milwaukee, I think. So Tessa may have figured out how to neutralize her daughter’s resistance. She may have found a place – a nursing home, though she will never use those words – midway between Sheboygan and Elmhurst, on Becky’s home turf, where I can be safely housed.
Becky finally finds her voice, and her anger. You said Milwaukee? You visited places in Milwaukee? When did all this happen, and when were you going to tell me?
I didn’t visit places, honey. I did some research and found one place that got very good reviews, and I decided to drive up there and see it for myself. They didn’t know I was coming, and that’s what I wanted. I talked to the administrator. She let me visit with several of the attendants. I had lunch in the café. I didn’t tell you because I knew how you’d feel about it. But I want us all to drive down there and see the place. It’s on the west side. Brookfield, actually.
I can’t believe you and Uncle Leander have this all figured out and you’re just telling Grandpa and me about it now.
Leander hasn’t seen the place yet. We’ve talked about it, but there wasn’t any secret plot. I thought we could spend the night, drive down there tomorrow, take a look. Then Leander can drive your grandpa back to Sheboygan.
Becky nods and gives her mother a hard smile. All figured out, she says.
The administrator of the place, a large woman named Mrs. Platt, happens to be there on a Sunday, which tells me that this trip is not spontaneous. But Becky and I had already concluded at least that much. Becky has taught me a little trick to help me remember names. She suggested that I make some mental association between the name and the face. I think about how the administrator’s face looks like a dinner plate.
The woman gives us a tour, referring to the place at every opportunity as a retirement community. Tessa and Leander avoid the words, avoid provoking Becky, who trails mutely along. There is no talk about money. I am expecting it, but then I realize that this is no doubt something that has already been discussed. I have a small savings account that I have not had to touch, and of course I own my house outright. Still, this place has amenities that I had not expected, and it is hard to imagine that I could afford the kind of care that my children apparently think I need. Tessa and Robert funded most of my trip to Greece after Thea died, and Robert’s alimony checks have given Tessa a comfortable life – although I realize that there is a cost to everything, and it is not necessarily financial. In any case, I suspect that my three children have had discussions about the financing of my nursing care, and all the messy details have been settled. I feel embarrassed that I have reached this point in my life without the resources to complete the journey, that my kids are obligated to support me in a way that I will probably never fully know. Thea and I worked in the restaurant for decades, but now I have pitifully little to show for my labors.
I am told that I will be able to move into the place in about six weeks. The finality of it hits me unexpectedly hard, and I see that Becky is just as unprepared. Not much more than twenty-four hours ago, I was sitting on the porch swing in front of my house on Atherton Drive in Sheboygan, hearing the phone ring. Becky was at the other end, waiting for me to pick up. Six weeks. There is, says Mrs. Platt, one hitch. I have been put on a waiting list for a private room, but in the meantime I will be sharing space with another resident.
Who? Becky pipes up. It is the first word she has uttered since walking through the front entrance, but it has apparently awakened her. How do you know they’ll be compatible? Can we meet his roommate?
Mrs. Platt looks at me. I think this must be something that nursing home staff learn: to honor and to always acknowledge the elderly resident, even if someone else has asked the question. I can’t tell you at this point who you’ll be sharing a room with, Mr. Pappas. But we will make every effort to pair you with a gentleman with whom have some common interests. We do this all the time, and it always works out. But I promise you that it will be a temporary arrangement, and you will be given a private room just as soon as one becomes available.
Six weeks. I have never lived anywhere other than Sheboygan, and now, at the age of eighty-nine, I will be leaving the city forever. Like any place, Sheboygan has undergone amazing changes over the years. There is an arts center downtown with a collection that is supposed to rival art museums in Chicago. There is a fancy resort and an indoor water park down near the breakwater. The Atheneum is competing with restaurants serving lobster fettuccine and boneless ribeye and veal scaloppini at prices of forty-five or fifty dollars a plate. Incredible as it sounds, young people now come to Sheboygan from all over the country to surf the Lake Michigan waves. A Milwaukee television station has described Sheboygan as The Malibu of the Midwest. Malibu. If you can imagine.
The apartment building where Thea’s mother lived was torn down years ago, replaced by condominiums and a parking garage. In fact, many of the houses on the streets where Nicholas and I rode our red Schwinn Excelsiors seventy-five years ago have long been demolished. In their place stand larger, much grander residences. In Sheboygan, as apparently in so many other cities in America, older houses are of less value than the land on which they sit. To my astonishment, and against all odds, the house where Thea and I lived in the months after we were first married remains defiantly untouched. And the field behind it has not yet been developed, although it is hard to imagine that it will remain that way for long. The field serves no purpose. It is not being used for grazing. It has not been cultivated for crops. There are no hiking paths and trail signs amid the weeds. The noxious yellow flowers continue to bloom every spring, admired or ignored by those who drive by. I have no idea who owns the property or what their intentions are. The house itself has seen the usual parade of tenants and has undergone a number of major and minor renovation projects. Some have improved the appearance of the house. Some, honestly, have not. But the house, along with others on the block, seems to be proudly defying modernity in a way that is not unlike the houses in Farsala, and on Naxos, where the past insists on existing alongside the present rather than succumbing to it.
Leander and Sarah have planned a farewell party for me at the Atheneum. The event will be held on a Saturday afternoon, so the restaurant will be closed for the day. It sounds as if it will be a great celebration, so I will have to do my best to appear happy and grateful, despite how I actually feel. I now have a good idea how hard it was for Mama to leave Nicholas when she and Papa moved back to Greece, because I will be leaving Thea. Her tombstone at Calvary Cemetery is a three-minute walk from my brother’s, so I have been able to visit them both when I make the trip. The cemetery is another place in Sheboygan that has not changed over the years, other than the steady, relentless addition of more and more tombstones.
Maggie is making the trip home for the farewell party. I have insisted that she stay with me at the house, so Sarah has come over to make up the bed, run the vacuum, tidy things up. I had hoped at one time that Maggie might move back to the Midwest, but she has made a good life for herself in Denver. She married briefly, before deciding that marriage did not suit her. She never had children and said that she never wanted them, never regretted the decision, although I see the way she is with Becky’s kids, and I wonder.
Maggie arrives several days before the party, so we have time to sit and talk. I do not ask if she was involved in the discussions with Tessa and Leander about my care. That matter has been decided, and there is no point in relitigating it. We talk about politics, but we only skate along the surface. With the passing of time, I have found myself more and more in alignment with Maggie’s worldview. But I know that my older daughter has always positioned herself in the front lines, and that is not where I want to be. What Maggie and I talk about, mostly, is her mother. The way Thea dealt with her breast cancer, especially its recurrence, is something Maggie says will always remember.
I don’t know if I would be as strong as Mom was, she says.
It is hard for me to grasp that Maggie is nearly the same age as Thea when my wife died. Somehow, it has not occurred to me that Maggie has had thoughts of breast cancer, that she probably feels for lumps whenever she showers, that she reminds her doctor about her family history, that she and Tessa compare results of their mammograms over the phone.
I tell Maggie about the trip that her mother and I took to Door County, the little one-bedroom cottage in Egg Harbor where we stayed, when we thought that Thea had beaten cancer for good. As I have grown older, I realize that certain things have slipped from my mind, probably forever. The faces of childhood friends. Names. Places. Events that had once seemed too monumental to forget. But certain memories are as clear to me today as they ever were, and that trip that Thea and I took to Egg Harbor is one of them.
The picture window in the living room looks out over Green Bay. The curtains are pulled back. They are red-and-yellow plaid, and the curtain on one side of the window is shorter than the other. There are several sailboats out on the bay. The one closest to shore, which has a dark green vertical stripe on its sail, dips suddenly as if it is going to capsize. But the boat manages to right itself, and it points itself west and sails away. Thea is in the kitchen making sandwiches. She returns with two plates, two sandwiches. We sit together on the sofa, eating lunch and watching the sailboats dance across the water. Dance. That is the word Thea uses to describe the movement of the boats. As if they are part of a ballet being staged for our entertainment. After lunch, we wash our dishes and go into the bedroom. Thea reads her book and I close my eyes and try to nap. Somehow, with my eyes closed, it seems as if my awareness of everything around me is heightened. I can hear Thea turning the pages of her book. I can hear squirrels scampering around in the trees outside, bird conversations, car tires crunching in the gravel. I can smell the vegetable soup that Thea has left to simmer in the kitchen. I feel the thumping of my own heart.
It seems to reassure Maggie to know that certain memories of Thea are not lost. It encourages her to talk about her mother. A silly argument about how best to clean the screen on the kitchen window. Thea crying on the phone when Maggie told her that she was moving to Denver. Watching her mother bake Vasilopita for the first time, Thea handing the coin to Maggie and showing her how to bury it in the dough.
Leaving Sheboygan, I say. Leaving this house… I do not know how to finish the thought, but Maggie understands and does not press for more.
I do not know most of the guests at the party. The Atheneum’s customers all know Leander, and they associate the restaurant with him. I stop into the place for lunch occasionally, but I stay out of the kitchen and mostly keep to myself. Fortunately, the family is here in force: Maggie, Tessa, Leander and Sarah, Becky and Will and their boys Jordan and Peter, Kat and Mark. Kat and her husband live in St. Louis, so my contact with her is mostly by phone. Their presence at the party tells me what a monumental family occasion this has been billed.
The thing about a party in your honor is that you can pretty much dictate when it ends. After three and a half hours of food and conversation, several speeches, a dozen or so toasts, and an awkward serenade from two customers I have never seen before, I tell Maggie that I am tired and would like to go home and lay down. I make one final pass through the room, thinking about how many dolmades have been served here, how many bowls of stifado, how many stuffed tomatoes, how many plates of grilled lamb and spanakopita. I consider detouring into the kitchen, but like the house I will soon be leaving, it holds too many memories. I tell Leander to carry on without me. I mean for the party to continue, but I see that he is interpreting it otherwise. He tells me that he loves me, and he gives me a long, enduring hug.
There are words for what happens to an aging brain, but the words do not seem to adequately characterize what is happening to mine. A person can go for a walk and leave the burner on, and lose his sense of direction while driving around familiar roads, and forget the word for the strap with a buckle at one end that goes around your waist – a person can experience all of these things but still have complete awareness of the world, still have the ability to express himself most of the time, still remember all the important people and events of his life. He can still distinguish between what actually happened in the past and what he read about in a book. He can look at a photograph and remember when and where it was taken, and how he felt on that particular day. I think that parts of a brain can decay while other parts, important parts, remain healthy and alive. I have absolutely no understanding of medical science, but I also think that medical science has little understanding of me, or of the millions of nuances of thought and memory and ideas and emotions and all the treasures inside a human mind. If I have lost some mental capabilities over the years – and I would not deny that I have – I will be fierce about holding onto the capabilities I have retained. Thea would not have allowed any part of me to atrophy due to laziness, and I will not dishonor her.
My roommate at the nursing home is a Polish widower named Janusz Markowicz, a wiry man with dark, penetrating eyes and a full head of neatly combed white hair. In contrast to most of the residents I have seen, Janusz is very properly dressed: a gray shirt with sharp collars, gray slacks, black shoes and black socks. As if he has someplace to go.
Mrs. Platt assures me that Janusz Markowicz and I have any number of things in common and will find that we have much to talk about, but I am left to discover on my own what these things are. One thing that we do not have in common is a fondness for cats. Janusz owns a plump yellow cat that spends most of its time sitting and sleeping on the man’s lap, receiving an occasional stroke. The cat’s internal motor, which is set in a permanent low growl, is the only indication that he is not dead. The cat’s name is Oliver, according to one of the attendants. Every once in a great while, Oliver will slide down to the floor to stretch and use the litter box and graze from his big yellow bowl of dry cat food. Then, with some difficulty, he hops back up onto Janusz’s chair and onto his lap.
Our room is large enough to accommodate two single beds, two recliners, two end tables, two dressers, and not much else. We have a window that looks out on a pretty little courtyard with a wooden bench, a well-tended flower garden, and two birdfeeders that seem to attract two different varieties of birds. Thea could have identified most of them, I am sure, but to me they are simply birds. Janusz has a framed photograph of a young woman on his dresser – either a wife or a daughter, I suppose, although he does not bother with introductions. There are no other personal effects in the room other than a small plate trimmed with gold and a painting of a cottage on a lake, both hanging on the wall where Janusz can look at them. Becky and her mother have brought in some photographs and other personal items, but I am not sure how long I will be in this room so I have not yet unpacked them.
I am not the most sociable person by nature, but seeing as how Janusz Markowicz and I will be spending most of our time together, I introduce myself and tell him something of my previous life in Sheboygan – my wife, my children, the restaurant. I tell him that I have a granddaughter who lives in Milwaukee with her husband and two sons, and I expect that they will be visiting occasionally. Making conversation for so long without any real response, and little acknowledgement, exhausts me, so I lean back in my recliner and close my eyes. When I open them again, Janusz Markowicz is reclined in his own chair, apparently asleep, his hand mechanically stroking Oliver.
My roommate has very few visitors and is possibly the grumpiest person I have ever met. Whether he is grumpy because visitors are few, or visitors are few because he is grumpy is a mystery that probably has no answer. Janusz’ first visitor is a middle-aged man who delivers a box of taffy and several magazines, stays for about three minutes, never sits down, never introduces himself to me, speaks a few words in a dialect I have never heard, shakes Janusz’ hand as if they are meeting for the first time, and leaves. The man returns on the same day every week, delivering the same package and following the same three-minute routine. When he is in one of his more sociable moods, Janusz offers me a piece of taffy. The rest of the box sits there, mostly untouched, until the end of the week when the taffy is tossed into our community trash can. Janusz has two other visitors – both women, equally unpersonable. Both have come, it seems to me, to complete some obligatory errand or assignment rather than to visit.
Becky makes a point to visit two or three times a week. When she comes on the weekend, she brings Jordan and Peter. I am sure that there are a thousand things a thirteen-year-old and a fourteen-year-old would rather be doing than sitting and visiting with an 89-year-old man in a nursing home. But both boys are always cheerful, never outwardly resentful. One day, without asking, Becky opens the bottom drawer of my dresser, takes out my photograph of Thea and me and my photograph of Maggie and Tessa and Leander, taken when they were children. She arranges them on top of my dresser and stands back to inspect them. When she is here, before leaving, Becky often stops in to see Mrs. Platt and to inquire into the status of my private room request. Since the framed photos have now been brought out from storage, I presume that my shared living arrangement is not going to end soon. Janusz opens his eyes long enough to see the photos and to acknowledge Becky and the boys. Then he drifts off.
The weeks pass, and the promised private room never materializes. Janusz Markowicz and Oliver and I develop what passes as a satisfactory routine. During the day, Oliver sleeps on Janusz’s lap. At night, he sleeps at the end of his bed. Janusz and I eat breakfast in the room and we go to the dining area for lunch and dinner, eating across from each other at the same table. He and I get out of bed at different hours of the night to use the bathroom. The only time the television is turned on is when we are watching the evening news, and Jeopardy. Janusz would do quite well on Jeopardy, if he did not have to navigate the buzzer and if he were not forced to phrase his answer in the form of a question. He will often mutter answers, correctly, before the contestants can do so. Strangely, as well as he knows history and geography and the most obscure things like religious icons and medieval weaponry, Janusz can never remember the names of the women who attend regularly to our needs, who deliver our breakfast and endure his complaints about how stale the muffins are or how tasteless the fruit is.
Her name is Jessica, I tell him one morning, after he has misidentified the woman who has brought our breakfast for the fifth day in a row.
Janusz looks sharply at me, as if I had just accused him of something terrible. I know what her name is. She’s been working here for six years. She was here when I moved in. She has a daughter who went to the National Spelling Bee in Washington.
If you know her name, why do you call her something different every day? She’s not Betty or Dolores or Martha or Penelope. Her name is Jessica.
Why can’t she bring me decent food? How many more breakfasts am I going to have in my life? I’m waiting for her to bring me a muffin that hasn’t been sitting out for two days. Is that asking too much?
I finish my own muffin with a small, unnecessary flourish. She doesn’t make the food, Janusz. There’s someone in the kitchen who prepares the food. Jessica just delivers it. And stands there listening to you complain about it.
Just then, Janusz makes a sound that I have never heard. He laughs. He stops himself suddenly, as if the sound is as unfamiliar to him as it is to me. But he is smiling and nodding at me, and then he takes a large bite of muffin, chews slowly, wipes the crumbs off his chest, leans back in his recliner and begins stroking Oliver, who is as indifferent to our little exchange as ever.
Certain thoughts strike us at the strangest times. It strikes me now that the man who came every week with taffy and magazines has not been to visit Janusz for a long time – in fact, that Janusz has had almost no outside company at all over the past month or so. I was never introduced to any of his visitors, but we are actually conversing now, in our way, so it seems like as good a time as any to ask.
Who exactly was the taffy man? And why doesn’t he come around any more?
Janusz smiles again. I am certain he knows who I mean, but he tilts his head, a bit theatrically. The Taffy Man?
The taffy you used to throw into the trash can. After you offered me a piece.
Oh. Him. Carl, I think his name is. I worked with his father. Good guy. Before he died, he told Carl to come visit me once a week and to be sure to bring taffy. He told Carl I loved taffy. That was our little joke. We both hated the stuff.
But he stopped coming.
Janusz shrugs. I let him off the hook. One time when you weren’t around. Told him it was all a big joke and he could stop coming every week. I didn’t want his taffy and I didn’t need the magazines and his visits weren’t brightening my day. The others – they were ladies Mrs. Platt sent down because she thought I needed the company. She thought I spent too much time in my room, sulking. I guess all that’s changed, now that you’re here.
At least once every other week, Becky will walk me out to the car and take me for a drive. There is a place nearby that serves frozen custard, for which I have developed a taste. If the weather is nice, we will drive to Mitchell Park and find a bench where we can sit and watch people kayaking down the Fox River. Sometimes Becky drives me back to her house and I sit and watch Jordan and Pete playing video games while my granddaughter makes sandwiches in the kitchen. I feel the changing of the seasons on these outings. From my room at the nursing home, I can observe small changes in the courtyard: the spring and summer flowers die off and are replaced by fall plantings, sweaters begin appearing on visitors, the squirrels seem more active. But only when Becky takes me outside do the seasonal changes feel real. I have no reason to resent having to spend my final years in this place. It is decent enough, the staff is pleasant enough, the food is good enough and there are plenty of activities to keep us occupied, if we choose. Having Becky nearby is a blessing. Even Janusz Markowicz has grown on me, and I think the feeling is mutual. But there are times when I feel an overwhelming sadness, and I want nothing more than to join Thea, and Mama and Papa, and Nicholas. I have no clear picture of this place where we will be joined. But as long as I have had to live without my wife, and my parents, and my brother, I feel that I am owed one more, and more leisurely, life together.
It is the middle of November when we have our first snowfall. It comes as a surprise – waking up and seeing snow blanketing the shrubs and the bench in the courtyard, birds hopping around as if confused by the new appearance of things. It is a Saturday, and Becky has promised to come with the boys, but I wonder if the snow will keep them home.
Jessica appears with our breakfast, on schedule, and tells us that the roads have been cleared and that outside visits should not be affected. But I am waiting to see.
And at ten-thirty, Becky arrives, as promised, along with Jordan and Peter.
Jordan’s working on a school project, Peter announces. The boys exchange a look.
Why don’t we let Jordan explain, says Becky.
Jordan sits down on the side of my bed, takes a notebook and a pen out of his bookbag. It’s for my World History class. We’re all supposed to interview someone who remembers World War Two. We’re supposed to ask what it was like and all that. He writes something in his notebook and looks up at me, expectant.
Well, you’re in luck. I do remember World War Two. So I guess we can get started.
Becky looks at Janusz. Maybe we should go out into the common room. Mr. Markowicz might want to rest.
You won’t bother me, Janusz says.
Jordan shrugs, makes another notation. Along with the notebook, he has brought a small tape recorder, and he pushes a button, sets the device down on the bed. So, Grandpa Pappas, how old were you when the war started?
Janusz Markowicz sits, mostly with his eyes closed, while I talk about Papa’s attempts to enlist after Pearl Harbor, his suppertime rants about Mussolini and the Italian Fascists, how anxiously Nicholas and I followed the news, afraid that the war would end before we were old enough to join the fight. Jordan makes occasional notes while I talk about our visit to the enlistment office in Sheboygan, our bus trip across the state, our training at Fort McCoy. Janusz is still reclined in his chair, eyes closed, but every now and then his expression changes minutely so I can tell that he has not fallen asleep.
Nicholas went to war. I was not certain how I would narrate this part, but I decide to simply tell it as it happened. My brother fought. I did not. In the last week of training, I accidentally fired my rifle, wounded myself. It was a stupid accident. I spent a night in the camp hospital and then I was sent home to recover while Nicholas was sent off to war. So I followed the war from our home in Sheboygan. Nicholas was sent to Asia. The war in Europe was winding down. Hitler had killed himself, Germany had surrendered. But Japan was still fighting. For the honor of the Emperor. We got letters from my brother – censored, of course, so we didn’t know exactly where he was or what was going on with the war. But we knew that he was over there on the other side of the world, fighting to end this terrible business. He and I had worried that the war would end too soon, that we would be left out. Now, all I wanted was for it to be over and for Nicholas to come back to Sheboygan. Mama was angry all the time. She didn’t understand why we were still fighting a war. Hitler was dead. Mussolini had been executed, by his own countrymen. Even Roosevelt was now dead. What was the point of killing more people? And then we got word that Nicholas had been killed in Okinawa. If you don’t know where Okinawa is, what it was, you should read about it. It’s a skinny little cluster of islands, hundreds of miles from anything, where more than two-hundred thousand soldiers and civilians, Japanese and Americans, died. When wars are over, you can see that most of the battles were fought over insignificant things. Okinawa was a terrible battle over a small place. I suppose it seemed important to the men who were sitting in offices looking at maps. But it was a terrible cost to pay. Nicholas paid. Mama and Papa paid. We all paid, in a sense. But it was Nicholas who paid with his life.
Without further explanation, I slide out of our personal experience and back into the larger world: the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the unconditional surrender of Japan, the celebrated return of those soldiers who survived – those fortunate ones who, as it turned out, were not necessarily as fortunate as they first appeared. Maggie and Tessa and Leander know the general circumstances of Nicholas’ death – but I doubt that Becky knows, and I am content to allow misimpressions to persist with her teenaged sons.
Jordan’s tape recorder is still humming. He looks at his mother, they exchange nods, Jordan turns off the device and closes his notebook.
Something happens between Janusz and me after Becky and the boys leave. He regards me with different eyes. I know almost nothing about Janusz Markowicz other than what Mrs. Platt has told me: that he is a Polish widower. I know that he is a few years younger than me and so, like me, he did not fight in the war. But my war tales, and particular my stories about Nicholas and Okinawa, seems to have resonated with Janusz in some unexpected way.
Something happens that shifts our relationship. Janusz is still grumpy with the nurses, grumpy with the attendants who bring his stale muffins, grumpy by nature. But now, suddenly, he is talking to me. Our conversation has always been superficial, functional, edged with his innate sarcasm and crankiness. Now, something has changed. Janusz Markowicz begins talking honestly – and, having discovered his true voice, I find that he is not easily silenced.