When surprised by a visit at ten in the morning a year or so ago, the two companionable women, both in their eighties but looking twenty years younger, were still in their immaculately clean house robes, one hanging out a load of wash in the sunshine on a square laundry tree in the backyard and the other sitting at the gleaming Formica table in the kitchen. Vi had no immediate plans to go back to work, but also no plans to give notice to any of her employers. Later, she quit her office-cleaning job, but she does continue, though now eighty-nine years old, to clean house for at least two families.
Vi is still in good health, and active in church. She has recently taken a much-anticipated trip to Alaska which was not as successful as it might have been, since one member of the group had to go home halfway through due to a death in the family. “They never should have told her,” Vi says.
Helen’s health, too, is reasonably good. Now ninety-six, she takes only one prescription medication, for high blood pressure. Her balance has worsened, and her hearing has deteriorated slightly. But she is mentally alert, with an excellent memory, and her sense of humor is still lively, as is her interest in the activities of her family and friends. After several years of a successful companionship, Helen’s young roommate was removed to another facility. The roommate who succeeded her was an old woman of a sour temperament, active enough to propel herself around in a wheelchair, but a constant grumbler. She died not long after arriving; Helen did not know the cause. The current roommate is a kindly Ukrainian woman with a large circle of friends and family: Helen mentions the noise produced by the long, frequent visits, though she does not explicitly complain.
Helen maintains the same rather limited physical activity as when she entered the nursing home. Since she has fallen several times, however, she is no longer allowed to move about on her own but is connected to an alarm on the back of her chair by a wire clipped to the shoulder of her blouse; the alarm will sound if she stands up. She still takes a daily walk around the nursing home when there is a volunteer or family member available to accompany her. She moves at a fairly brisk pace, leaning forward on her walker, and quietly nods or says hello to almost everyone she meets, though many residents are unaware of the meaning of her greeting and respond with a blank stare — which of course she can’t see. One section of the hallway, near the entrance lobby, displays greatly enlarged framed vintage photographs, in color, of features of the town as it used to be, such as the footbridge over the river, the old shopping street with its awnings and horse-drawn carriages, the great limestone buildings of the thread mill, and the legendary frog pond of Revolutionary War fame. She calls this part of the walk “going down Main Street” and likes to stop in front of each photograph and ask questions about it. She is still reluctant to join in any of the planned activities of the home, but she will, if pressed by family members, attend a Christmas concert or “Piano with Bob” in the Recreation Room, politely staying until the very end of what may be a tedious hour-long performance.
January 2006
Reducing Expenses
This is a problem you might have someday. It’s the problem of a couple I know. He’s a doctor, I’m not sure what she does. I don’t actually know them very well. In fact, I don’t know them anymore. This was years ago. I was bothered by a bulldozer coming and going next door, so I found out what was happening. Their problem was that their fire insurance was very expensive. They wanted to try to lower the insurance premiums. That was a good idea. You don’t want any of your regular payments to be too high, or higher than they have to be. For example, you don’t want to buy a property with very high taxes, since there will be nothing you can do to lower them and you will always have to pay them. I try to keep that in mind. You could understand this couple’s problem even if you didn’t have high fire insurance. If you did not have exactly the same problem, someday you might have a similar problem, of regular payments that were going to be too high. Their insurance was high because they owned a large collection of very good wine. The problem was not so much the collection per se but where they were keeping it. They had, actually, thousands of bottles of very good and excellent wine. They were keeping it in their cellar, which was certainly the right thing to do. They had an actual wine cellar. But the problem was, this wine cellar wasn’t good enough or big enough. I never saw it, though I once saw another one which was very small. It was the size of a closet, but I was still impressed. But I did taste some of their wine one time. I can’t really tell the difference, though, between a bottle of wine that costs $100, or even $30, and a bottle that costs $500. At that dinner they might have been serving wine that cost even more than that. Not for me, especially, but for some of the other guests. I’m sure that very expensive wines are really wasted on most people, including myself. I was quite young at the time, but even now a very expensive wine would be wasted on me, probably. This couple learned that if they enlarged the wine cellar and improved it in certain other specific ways, their insurance premiums would be lower. They thought this was a good idea, even though it would cost something, initially, to make these improvements. The bulldozer and other machinery and labor that I saw out the window of the place where I was living at the time, which was a house borrowed from a friend who was also a friend of theirs, must have been costing them in the thousands, but I’m sure the money they spent on it was earned back within a few years or even one year by their savings on the premiums. So I can see this was a prudent move on their part. It was a move that anyone could make concerning some other thing, not necessarily a wine cellar. The point is that any improvement that will eventually save money is a good idea. This is long in the past by now. They must have saved quite a lot altogether, over the years, from the changes they made. So many years have gone by, though, that they have probably sold the house by now. Maybe the improved wine cellar raised the price of the house and they earned back even more money. I was not just young but very young when I watched the bulldozer out my window. The noise did not really bother me very much, because there were so many other things bothering me when I tried to work. In fact, I probably welcomed the sight of the bulldozer. I was impressed by their wine, and by the good paintings they also owned. They were nice, friendly people, but I didn’t think much of their clothes or furniture. I spent a lot of time looking out the window and thinking about them. I don’t know what that was worth. It was probably a waste of my time. Now I’m a lot older. But here I am, still thinking about them. There are a lot of other things that I’ve forgotten, but I haven’t forgotten them or their fire insurance. I must have thought I could learn something from them.
Mother’s Reaction to My Travel Plans
Gainsville! It’s too bad your cousin is dead!
For Sixty Cents
You are in a Brooklyn coffee shop, you have ordered only one cup of coffee, and the coffee is sixty cents, which seems expensive to you. But it is not so expensive when you consider that for this same sixty cents you are renting the use of one cup and saucer, one metal cream pitcher, one plastic glass, one small table, and two small benches. Then, to consume if you want to, besides the coffee and the cream, you have water with ice cubes and, in their own dispensers, sugar, salt, pepper, napkins, and ketchup. In addition, you can enjoy, for an indefinite length of time, the air conditioning that keeps the room at a perfectly cool temperature, the powerful white electric light that lights every corner of the room so that there are no shadows anywhere, the view of the people passing outside on the sidewalk in the hot sunlight and wind, and the company of the people inside, who are laughing and turning endless variations on one rather cruel joke at the expense of a little balding redheaded woman sitting at the counter and dangling her crossed feet from the stool, who tries to reach out with her short, white arm and slap the face of the man standing nearest to her.