A Funny Kind of Paradise Read online

  Being Bettina, she didn’t stop for an answer, but I got what I wanted. She wheeled me into the dining room, a petulant child, removed from the playground.

  What a relief.

  * * *

  Now (as if that wasn’t enough) as I sit in the sunroom beside Mary after lunch, all the day-shift girls, Molly, Bettina, Michiko and Blaire, troop in and close the big double doors.

  The conversation is so heated and everyone is talking so fast that I can barely follow.

  Shouldn’t we move Fran and Mary?

  Nah, they can stay. We’re all here, let’s get this done.

  We need to change the groups.

  That’s not a heavy group!

  But it’s such a downer. By the end of the month, I just want to shoot myself.

  Yeah, there are too many energy suckers in that group.

  Joyce and Calvin should never be in the same group. They’re both so negative.

  And high maintenance.

  And Elaine is no peach either.

  But Mark is almost independent.

  I like them in the same group. You get it over with.

  Yeah, and didn’t you book your holidays for the month you’re in that group?

  Hey! That had no bearing.

  Bullshit.

  Don’t tell me bullshit.

  Whatever, Blaire, we need to change the groups.

  Put Mary in that group, she’s an energy giver.

  But her daughter is so awful.

  We see her once a week, if that.

  Evenings sees her more.

  That’s their problem, not ours.

  And Janet’s dying, everything’s gonna change.

  Janet’s dying?

  Yup, the doctor was in this morning.

  Someone’s always dying; this can’t wait. We gotta fix this problem.

  Because you’re going into that group next!

  Yeah, and I have lots of sick time, so how about I call in at six fifteen and let you work with a brand-new green casual who barely knows how to tie her own shoelaces every second day? Come on, you guys. We all agree that group is exhausting. Let’s split those two kids up, they’re wearing us down.

  Energy giver. Energy sucker. What does that mean?

  Anna, I feel that old part of my brain groaning to life like a rusty old kick-start motorcycle: the survivor part, the observer part, the schemer. The part that gets busy assessing a situation to see how it can be turned to my advantage.

  Molly has a paper and pen and she is moving names around like chess pieces, trying to find a workable fit, while the ladies quack and cluck and honk out their diverse opinions in the background. If anyone could make the whole group happy, it would be Molly, but I’m not sure it’s humanly possible.

  And Mary sits next to me, stiff in her chair. I can just barely touch her; I reach over to get her attention. I smile. She smiles back.

  Mary is reliable. Guaranteed, if you smile at her, she’ll smile back.

  The nurses are kinder, sweeter to Mary than to anyone else in this hospital.

  My brain hurts. And I’m drooling. Yuck.

  And furthermore, I knew Janet was under the weather but I didn’t know she was dying.

  The girls have been having trouble getting her to eat, but we’re used to that. That’s normal.

  Her daughter came in and I heard her say, “If you want to die, so be it.” But I didn’t think anything of it, because her daughter’s always saying morbid things like that.

  However, Janet’s curtains have been pulled for a day now, and there’s been a flurry of activity by the RN. When the doctor came this morning, I heard him say something about “palliative orders,” but I didn’t think anything about it until the girls brought it up this afternoon.

  So I guess Janet’s dying.

  * * *

  After the girls scatter, I sit with Mary, watching the garden, watching my tree from a different angle. The pain in my bottom is worse than the pain in my heart. Thank God, here comes Molly. I’m going for a groan.

  “Mmm.”

  “Frannie! You’re in pain?”

  I nod. “Mmm.”

  Molly looks at the time on her pager.

  “I bet you just had your afternoon meds…maybe they haven’t kicked in yet.”

  I scowl at her with every fibre of my being, white-knuckling the armrest of my wheelchair, trying to heave my ass to a better position.

  Molly laughs.

  “I know what you’re thinkin’! You’re thinkin’ I’ll show you kicked in! Sorry, sweetie. I’ll call the RN and see if you can have another hit. In the meantime, I’ll put you back to bed, okay?”

  Oh my God, why is life so damn hard?

  * * *

  Then, out of the blue, while I’m literally hanging mid-air, Chris shows up.

  My heart does a flip—my first thought is, Disaster! What could be wrong, for him to be here in the middle of the week? Anxious, I pant, and have to make a conscious effort to stop myself.

  Molly quickly whips the curtains closed as she lowers me to the bed.

  “Can I come in?”

  “One sec, Chris. Hang on, I’ll just be a…Okay, come on in.”

  “Hey, Mom.”

  I get a peck on the cheek.

  “This is a flying visit. I just dropped by to tell you I won’t be here Saturday, maybe for a couple of weeks.”

  I wait, expectant. Chris leans in and lowers his voice. It’s personal.

  “So, yeah. She left me.”

  I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath until I let it go. I reach for his hand resting on my bed rail. It’s a bit of an awkward angle, but I grip the back of his fingers and squeeze.

  “It’s okay, Mom. Actually. Waiting, uh, for the ax to fall, I think that was…worse than the blow.”

  Well. I guess that marriage was even more dead than I thought.

  And you know? I think he already seems lighter.

  As Chris takes a step back, he straightens just a tiny bit. “So. I’m going to be busy for a while. There are lots of details to be sorted out. I didn’t want you to worry. If you don’t see me, I mean.”

  I want to say “I appreciate that.”

  I want to say “Take all the time you need.”

  I want to say “Are-you-keeping-the-house do-you-have-a-lawyer what-about-the-diner are-you-okay-really-okay?”

  All those words. All that unsolicited advice, the interference, the control. I so desperately want to tell my son…what?

  What do I know about how to run a life, how to run his life, lying here prone in this bed?

  I want to say “I love you.”

  Instead I give Chris the thumbs-up.

  “Alright then. Ciao.”

  I wave.

  He’s already gone.

  * * *

  During the two years after she moved out, Angelina didn’t come by the house very often. We fell into a pattern of meeting every couple of weeks or so. I’d call her up and ask her for coffee or buy her lunch. We never went to your diner. Sometimes we’d try new restaurants together. The pleasure of exploring turned out to be something we both enjoyed, a neutral territory where we felt more like equals and fought less.

  After the dinner party for Chris and Theresa, Angelina stood me up a couple of times, which made me anxious. Over the phone, we had agreed on Thai food, and I sat at a booth where I could watch the door. Seeing her sassy self come in, my heart flipped with relief; I sipped my green tea studiously, hiding my feelings.

  “What are you having? I’m craving noodles,” she said.

  “How’s work?”

  “The same. I’m not going to stay there much longer. My boyfriend says…”

  “You’ve got a boyfriend?” I interrupted. “Why haven’t I met him?�
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  “You can meet him if you promise not to grill him,” she grinned.

  “Does he smoke dope?”

  “See, there you go, Ma! Jesus!”

  I could never really relax. I felt like a little girl, trying not to step on the cracks, afraid that the wrong thing would tumble out of my mouth.

  * * *

  Fortuitously, the nurse comes in with some painkillers right after Chris leaves.

  I sleep so deeply that I barely wake up for my evening tube-feed. I scarcely register Fabby turning me and changing me. The RN must have been generous with the good stuff.

  I am awakened by the night shift coming on, two casuals, doing the first round and laying out the linen, talking quietly but distinctly. They’re mid-conversation when they walk into our room.

  Oh my God, I did a night shift with her on third and the next day I was pooped!

  She can’t lift.

  Can’t? Hmph! Won’t, more like it. She had a way of standing back so I ended up doing all the rolling, and then she’d step up and slip in the clean pad and think she’d done her half. Then she had the gall to say, “Oh, that wasn’t a bad night.” My shoulders were so friggin’ sore the next day!

  Yeah, she did the same thing to me, and Leann was doing the RN position, so I told her about it, and Leann said, “Oh, she’s not so bad; you just have to make her take some initiative.” I don’t have all night to stand there and wait for her to make a move, for God’s sake! Chop, chop, we’ve got forty people to flip here!

  So next time I said, “You know what, I’ll do the North Wing and you do the East Wing,” and she said, “What about 305?” so I said, “Yeah, of course we’ll do her together first, but everyone else we can do alone.”

  So was it better?

  From my point of view, I’ve gotta say it was. I don’t know if she did her round, cuz I didn’t check up on her, but I know mine were done right.

  That’s it, eh? You can only do what you can do…

  And they’re out the door.

  * * *

  The new day passes like fingernails on a blackboard. I have bowel care; I am sick and wan. Good God, how does pooping become a day’s event? “I’m sorry, Mr. President, I can’t do that, today is reserved for moving my bowels!”

  Also, this room does not smell like flowers.

  The girls, all three shifts, are miserable wretches.

  We strike every damn time. If we strike every time, why should they listen?

  But we never get ahead. Look at the RNs—they’re going to get an increase!

  Yeah, everyone gets an increase but us; what’s with that?

  I thought we got two percent.

  It’s cuz we’re on the bottom.

  Yeah, ass-wipers.

  Until they have to look after Mom themselves, then it’s too much.

  They’re not big guns if you bring them out every time.

  Well, I’m going to vote to strike.

  Me too.

  Not me.

  Essential services.

  As long as they don’t touch our benefits.

  Somehow they manage to put all this aside when they pass behind Janet’s curtain. I feel raw, hyperalert to the activity in Janet’s corner. Basically, they are doing the same things that they do for me, and I anxiously interpret the sounds coming from behind the curtains. The aides turn Janet side to side every two hours and swab out her mouth with those dampened mint-flavoured green sponge-on-a-stick things. (They taste terrible, but they do get the phlegm out.) Molly puts lotion on Janet’s back, combs her hair and flips her pillows. Bettina makes sure the top sheet is fresh and white, and uncharacteristically, Stella murmurs while she works, so that even in her faraway place, Janet knows what to expect.

  Janet’s daughter comes in the evening, sitting quietly and reading a magazine, the rustle of turning pages punctuating the moments. When she goes home, sometimes the palliative volunteers take her place, playing soft music and sipping cups of tea, keeping vigil so that Janet doesn’t have to die alone…alone in a five-bed ward, that is.

  Even though I think about death and dying constantly, I am struck for a moment by the weirdness of the truth: someday I will cease to exist.

  How can something so normal be so shocking?

  Like white cells surrounding and neutralizing a virus, my mind takes the idea of death and disarms it, distances it, makes it acceptable. Someday, like everyone, I too will die. My pebble will fall in the stream, making a momentary ripple before settling on the riverbed with all the other stones, and the water will pass inevitably on.

  Someday. Not today.

  Anna. What the hell am I telling this to you for!

  * * *

  Lily has an evening shift and I’m in her group. She must not be getting enough work, because usually she doesn’t take the evenings. Evenings are not a good shift for single mothers with school-aged children. Frankly Lily looks haggard. I long to ask how she’s doing, but she’s moving very quickly. She almost pitches me into bed before supper, and when she comes back to give me a fresh brief before shift change, she is practically vibrating.

  “Am I getting burned out?” she asks while she works, deftly detaching the tabs on the disposable diaper and tucking them under my hip so that when she turns me, I won’t be lying on the side of the wet disposable and she can pull it out and throw it away. “The new girls look at those rough old hands and they tell themselves, ‘I hope I have the sense to quit before I get burned out like her.’ But we don’t; we’re too old to imagine working somewhere else, we’ve got bills, we need our pension and our benefits and inertia sets in and we’re too scared to make a change.”

  Lily looks anything but old—she looks high-school young and vulnerable, and definitely not old enough to be a mother.

  Lily flips me to the other side, and I land right in the middle of the clean disposable. She hooks her fingers under my hip, fishing, and the tabs pull through. Once the disposable is done up properly, Lily begins arranging the pillows—one behind my back, one between my knees, a flat one under my knees just to be certain I won’t fall forward, face-plant and suffocate.

  “I made Alice cry today,” she confesses. “I took too long with Joyce, and it set me behind. I was trying to catch up, so I was rushing Alice. I got her on the toilet and I was undressing her as fast and I could, and she just started to cry. She said, ‘It’s all too much, it’s all too much.’ Alice never talks anymore, and that was what she had to say. It’s so sad!”

  Lily supports my head with her left hand and flips the pillow under my head with her right. The fabric is cool against my cheek.

  “I feel so bad,” she says. “I didn’t go into this line of work to make little old ladies cry.”

  She’s off to her next bed.

  * * *

  As it turned out, the boyfriend’s name was Michael. Although he was tall and handsome, Mike turned out to be a big smelly Labrador of a guy, wagging his tail everywhere. When Ang introduced us, he gave me an affectionate hug that nearly knocked me over while Angelina laughed herself sick to see my body rigid with shock and my expression pained. “Sorry, Mrs. Jensen,” he said. “Angelina said you like a good cuddle.” He threw his arm around her neck in a chokehold and rubbed his knuckles on her head while she giggled hysterically. Even though I knew they were only horsing around, I had to restrain the urge to protect her with my cast-iron frying pan. I was glad when she twisted out of his grasp and kicked him hard behind his knees, buckling them.

  I was trying to be discreet when I asked if Michael had any goals, but both Angelina and her new boyfriend saw right through my polite questions.

  “I’m too young for big decisions like ‘What are you going to do with the rest of your life?’ Mrs. J. There’s a whole world to explore out there. Maybe I’ll start a band. You can be my lead singer, Angie baby. Would you do
that for me?”

  “I’d do anything for you.”

  “Anything?”

  “Anything.”

  I cleared my throat. When Ang looked at me, I raised my eyebrows.

  “What? Oh come on, Mom, you know I’m not a virgin, right?”

  Michael snickered.

  “Mom, we’re going to take a road trip to Montreal,” Angelina said without preamble.

  “What about your job?” I cried.

  “It’s just a crap job, isn’t that what you’re always trying to rub into me? The plus side of a crap job is you get to quit, no regrets, cuz it’s just a crap job.”

  “But what’s in Montreal?”

  “Well, Mike’s parents for starters. C’mon, Mom, this is exciting! We’re going on an adventure!”

  Angelina put her arm around me playfully. I looked in her shining face, and bit my tongue.

  * * *

  I wake up on Thursday morning in a terrible mood. I hear Molly’s voice in the hallway, but there is a new girl looking after me and I can’t make myself understood. It’s all I can do to stop myself from snapping at her fingers.…literally. With my teeth.

  The morning rush is over, and it’s almost lunch when Molly lopes in, talking over her shoulder, the new girl at her heels.

  It’s true, Frannie is particular, but it really isn’t that hard to understand her once you know what she wants. She has her ways of communicating. Here, look.

  “Frannie, show her ‘yes.’ ”

  To hell with that. I stab my finger at her, angry as thunder.

  “Moi?” says Molly with mock surprise.

  I shake my finger at the casual and stab it again at Molly.

  “Oh no, Francesca, this is my day off, but I traded with Bettina so she could do some volunteer work for some church function. You should have had Blaire, remember? She does my days off. But she called in sick. This is Vega.”