Like tonight, for instance.
Toby wandered in off Washington Avenue a few minutes ago, out of the thick night heat, looking about as bad as a man can look and still be alive. He’s ninety-four years old, with a spine so bent he can hardly lift his head, glasses thicker than his arm, a heart that just won’t quit.
He’s counting one-dollar bills from a tattered envelope with SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION in bold black letters across the top. If I remember correctly, he worked nearly half a century for an auto parts plant that merged with another plant, and most of his pension got lost in the transition. His Social Security check amounts to about three hundred dollars a month, and we all know what that buys you in Miami Beach.
“The room’s only six bucks, Toby,” I tell him when he keeps counting out the bills.
“Want a meal, too,” he mumbles, moving his dentures around in his mouth because they hurt his gums.
“Eight bucks, then.”
“And the Works. I think I want the Works, Millie.”
“You’d better be sure. It’s a bit more expensive.”
His head bobs slowly. It reminds me of a beach ball, rising, falling, riding a wave, and I want to stroke it, embrace it, kiss this old, beautiful head. It’s as hairless as a Chihuahua, with a mass of wrinkles that seems to quiver and dance to the back of the skull. Not so long ago, on a rainy afternoon down at the Ace Club, some of the old ones and I gathered around Toby’s head to see if we could read our fortunes in the wrinkles, like they were creases in a palm.
“I’m sure,” he says softly, depositing an old canvas bag on the counter, straining to look up. “How much?” His eyes behind those thick glasses are alarmingly small, almost transparent. I feel like they might disappear at any second.
“Twenty-five. I guess you know what all the fee includes.”
His smile creases his mouth and, like a widening ripple in a pond, touches all the other wrinkles in his face. For a moment or two, his features shift and slide, rearranging themselves. “Sure. I came with Mink, remember?”
Mink: right. She was close to a hundred, small as a toy doll with white hair that had fallen out in spots, exposing soft pink patches of scalp. She had cancer and the radiation or chemo or whatever it was they’d used on her had rotted her from the inside out, but her heart ticked on. She took baby steps, I remember, like a toddler learning to walk, and drooled a little when she talked.
It’s true that decades stretch between infancy and old age, but children and old ones aren’t all that different. Both are afraid. Both have special needs. Both require love. I understand that and they know it.
“There. Twenty-five.” He taps the stack of bills against the counter, straightening them, then slides the pile toward me.
“Sure?”
“Positive.”
“Okay, let’s go take a look at the menu.”
I ring for Sammy to man the desk and he shuffles in, big as a truck and all muscle. He’s not an old one, but he was living on the streets until I took him in and now I don’t know how I’d run this place without him. I’ve never heard him speak. I don’t know if it’s because he can’t or just that he chooses not to.
I come out from behind the counter and Toby hooks his old, tired arm in mine. The kitchen is in the back and while it’s not as grand as the ones in the fancy hotels on Ocean Drive, it feels like home to me. The fridge is always filled with everyone’s favorites — home-baked pies, drumsticks, potato salad, coleslaw, cookies by the dozens.
When I was doing private-duty nursing a long time ago, I made a point of cooking for my patients. They appreciated it. A lot of them were old ones too, and I learned to prepare the food to accommodate dentures, taste buds that had gone as smooth and dull as river stones, noses that no longer worked right. It taught me the importance of spices, sauces, garnishes that dressed the food good enough to make your mouth water.
Toby’s mouth is watering now as we peer into the fridge together, I can tell. He points at what he wants. One of those, one of these, this, that. His finger is curved into a permanent claw from arthritis; just looking at it hurts me. That’s how it is with me and them. That’s how it always is when someone I care for is in pain. It becomes my pain.
“And cookies,” he finishes. “Chocolate chip cookies.”
“They’ve got nuts in them.”
“Soft nuts?”
“Not really.”
“Aw, so what. Nuts are fine.”
Together, we remove the items from the fridge and set them out on the counter. Before I begin preparing the meal, though, I show him to the best room in the house. It’s on the top floor, in back. There’s a skylight over the huge bed, a color TV and VCR, forty or fifty videocassettes for him to choose from, and an adjoining bath with a sunken tub that swirls and bubbles like a Jacuzzi, where fluffy towels, a silk robe, and matching pajamas are laid out. He sighs as his feet sink into the thick carpeting on the floor and sighs again as he eases his tired bones onto the bed and peers up, up into a sky strewn with stars.
“You’ll tell me when dinner’s ready?” he asks, frowning as though he doesn’t quite trust me now.
“I’ll bring it up here. Feathers is going to smell that chicken. You mind if she comes up too?”
“No, no, of course not,” he says, hooking his hands under his head, lost in the stars. He doesn’t hear me leave, but Feathers hears me enter the kitchen.
She’s a white Persian who has a definite fondness for chicken and old ones. She likes to curl up on their chests and knead their soft bones with her gentle paws. I toss her tidbits as I prepare the meal and explain the situation to her. She blinks those sweet amber eyes as if to say she understands perfectly and follows me upstairs when I take Toby his meal. He’s perched on the wicker couch in the black silk pajamas and robe, squinting at the TV, watching Cocoon. It’s a favorite with all the old ones. I set his tray down on the table and pull up the other chair.
Feathers flops across Toby’s feet, covering them like a rug, and he looks down at her and laughs. I can’t remember the last time I heard him laugh and I’ve known Toby for ten or twelve years, since he moved down here after his wife died. I don’t know if he has kids. He’s never spoken of them if he does. But that’s how it is with a lot of the old ones. When they get too old for their kids to deal with them, when there’s talk of nursing homes, of confinement, they get scared and run away. Who can blame them?
“Watch this, Millie,” he says excitedly, stabbing a gnarled finger at the screen. “This is where they swim in the rejuvenation pool.”
I divide my attention between the screen and the chicken, which I cut up into small, manageable bites for him. I pass him a napkin, which he tucks under his throat like a bib, and pass him his plate. He sets it carefully on his lap, impales a chunk of meat, and dips it into a scoop of dressing. His hand trembles as it rises to his mouth. A dab of dressing rests on his chin, but he doesn’t seem to notice it. He chews slowly, thoughtfully, eyes glued to the screen.
“Will it hurt?” he asks, not looking at me.
“Of course not.”
“Are you sure?”
“You were here with Mink,” I remind him. “Did she look like she hurt?”
Mouth puckering around a cranberry: “She always hurt. From the cancer. Or the radiation. From something.”
Physical pain or psychic pain — the difference isn’t that great. Shift your focus and one becomes the other. Mink knew that. “She’s okay now, though.”
“You talked to her?”