Concamadine Beadsman smiled.
Mr. Bloemker leaned over the bed toward Lenore. His eyes had a way of attracting sunlight and turning weird colors behind his glasses.
“Ms. Beadsman, may I bounce a theory off you, bearing on matters we’ve previously discussed?”
“Let me finish this story. You can tell by her smile she likes it.”
“Roughage.”
“Merely this. Has it not occurred to you that a sense of shall we say social history is strongest among the young, not the old?”
“ ‘Then Billy Mink did a very foolish thing; he lost his temper completely. He called Reddy Fox bad names. But he did not dare try to take the big pickerel away from Reddy, for Reddy is much bigger than he. Finally he worked himself into such a rage that he ran off, leaving his pile of fish behind.’ ”
“That as people age, accumulate more and more private experience, their sense of history tightens, narrows, becomes more personal? So that to the extent that they remember events of social importance, they remember only for example ‘where they were’ when such-and-such occurred. Et cetera et cetera. Objective events and data become naturally more and more subjectively colored. Does this account seem reasonable?”
“ ‘Reddy Fox and Little Joe Otter took care not to touch Billy Mink’s fish, but Reddy divided his big pile with Little Joe Otter. Then they, too, started for home, Reddy carrying the big pickerel.’ ”
“Roughage.”
“Any thoughts on this? I am of course extrapolating on some of the issues we tackled when last we met face to face. Of course I feel the insight holds particularly true of Midwestemers, who stand in such an ambiguous geographical and cultural relation to certain other less occluded parts of the country that the very objective events and states of affairs that are proper objects of a social awareness must pass in transit to the awarenesses of the residents here through the filters both of subjectively colored memory and geographical ambivalence. Hence perhaps the extreme complication we can see all around us at the Shaker Heights facility.”
Behind Concamadine’s lovely red lip and the bottom row of her even teeth Lenore could see a clear lake of saliva accumulating, growing, lapping with each breath at the backs of the teeth and beginning to shine at the corners of Concamadine’s mouth as her jaw still hung low.
“ ‘Late that night, when he had recovered his temper, Billy Mink began to grow hungry. The more he thought of his fish, the hungrier he grew.’ ”
“Any thoughts at all, then?”
“Not really.”
“Roughagegegege.”
“Oh, dear.”
“She just got too much saliva in her mouth, is all.” Lenore reached for some Kleenex from the bedside table. “Just a little too much saliva.”
“Happens to the best of us.”
“Mr. Blumker?” At the doorway was Neil Obstat, Jr., knocking faintly at the thin pretend-wood paneling, staring at Lenore, who was bent over a smiling beautiful gray-haired figure in a cotton bathrobe and wool socks, with a handful of sopped Kleenex. “Hello,” he said. “Hi, Lenore.”
“Hi.”
“How are you today?”
“Roughage,” said Concarnadine, wiggling her toes.
“You can swallow, you know, Gramma C. You can just swallow your saliva, you know.”
“How’s your Mom, there?” said Obstat.
“Perhaps we’ll just step outside and let you finish reading to Concamadine,” Mr. Bloemker said, his finger tracing the outline of his beard.
Lenore put the wet Kleenex in Mr. Bloemker’s outstretched hand and bent to the book again. She heard the tissues drop into Concamadine’s metal wastebasket with a heavy sound as Mr. Bloemker went for the door where Obstat was standing.
“Mr. Blumker I’m Neil Obstat, Jr., of Stonecipheco Baby Food Products,” Lenore heard Obstat say. She could tell he was still looking at her from the back.
“Bloemker, actually…,” Lenore heard. “Just step out a bit… hall.” There were sounds.
“ ‘Finally he could stand it no longer and started for the Big River to see what had become of his fish.’ ”
Lenore could remember that at Shaker School one time Neil Obstat had been given a wedgie in the boys’ locker room by Ed Creamer and Jesus Geralamo and the whole sinister crew, and had been left by Creamer hanging by his underwear from a coat-hook in the hall outside the locker rooms, in full view of Lenore and Karen Daughenbaugh and Karen Baum and all the rest of the girls in seventh-hour P.E. who were on the way to the bus, and that a janitor had had to lift Obstat down, and that Karen Baum had said she’d been able to see just about Neil Obstat’s whole butt.
“ ‘He reached the strip of beach where he had so foolishly left them just in time to see the last striped perch disappear down the long throat of Mr. Night Heron.’ ”
“Roughage.” Concamadine was foraging for something in her mouth with a finger. Lenore looked back down at the book.
“Membrane, Concamadine,” Lenore said, trying to make her voice deep. “I say to you ‘membrane.’ ”
“Roughage.”
LaVache Beadsman had said, years ago, that Lenore hated Concamadine because Concarnadine looked like her. True, Concarnadine’s hair was long and full and curled down all over the shoulders of her pink bathrobe, where Lenore’s was of course shorter and brown and hung in two large curls to meet in points below her chin. But Concamadine’s actual face was Lenore’s face, too, more or less, the less being a dust of wrinkles at the comers of Concamadine’s eyes and two deep smile-furrows from the corners of her mouth down into her jaw.
“Lenore hates Concamadine because Concarnadine looks like her,” LaVache had said to John, in the east wing, while Lenore read by the window and listened. “Lenore identifies with her in some deep and scary way.”
“Then are we invited to extend the same reasoning to your relationship with Dad?” John had said with a laugh. “Since we all know that you’re basically just Dad’s image in a tiny little mirror.”
LaVache had moved in, brandishing the leg. And Lenore had watched Miss Malig, current in her fingers, iodine in her eyes, descend, restore order.
“Oh, Lenore.”
Lenore looked up from the book. “Pardon?”
“Roughage roughage.” The bathrobe was now up over her knees, knees that looked to be covered with the kind of gray skin usually found at the backs of elbows.
Obstat’s voice was in the hall. Lenore could hear the wet sound of Mr. Bloemker doing something to his own face. Protruding from the edge of the frame of the door, she could see, was the bottom of Mr. Bloemker’s brown sportcoat. The floor of the doorway looked dusted with a faint black that trailed out into the hall. Lenore wished Concamadine’s room were cleaner.
“ ‘And this is how it happened that Billy Mink went dinnerless to bed. But he had learned three things, had Billy, and he never forgot them — that wit is often better than skill; that it is not only mean but is very foolish to sneer at another; and that to lose one’s temper is the most foolish thing in the world.’ ”
Lenore watched steam chug out of Concamadine’s humidifier and turn pale yellow in the light of the glass wall. The steam made her think of another room.
“What should we do, Gramma C.?”
Concamadine smiled beautifully and plucked at the papery skin on the backs of her hands. Lenore watched her roll her head back and forth at the ceiling, for joy.