One More for the Trolley Car, By Sara Spring

Canned applause echoes from the small television set before me in the cramped room. The floor is paved with white marbled linoleum and I am surrounded by living corpses, those of us who are forgotten and waiting to die. Every so often the happy cheerful voice of a little child bouncing around comes to us usually followed up with a scolding by its mother who seems to think solitude is more important than the energizing soul of youth that is a ray of sunlight to our misty setting.

Jeopardy is on yet again and the remote has been hidden from us by one of the caretakers. Although I don’t appreciate this I do think it’s only fair as Harry likes to hide it in his underwear. Living here is not what I had hoped for myself as I grew old and unable to walk on carpet. I always thought my heart would go before my bladder but so goes my luck. As I rot in this facility I am a child again, asked constantly if I need help by an able bodied person who stands patiently by for me to move from one chair into another as the aches of my body these days have become deeper and more chilling, cutting right through my bones.

“What is the lead actress in Gone with the Wind for $100?” the announcer of the show never changed as didn’t the answers.

“Scarlett O’Hara.” Vinny said out loud.

This could go on for hours and it did. I knew every answer to Jeopardy and not because I was bookish but because I couldn’t get away from it. Sometimes humor could be found in this predicament with the young adults stopping by to join in on a lazy afternoon of Jeopardy. So often they are impressed with our memory retention and constantly congratulating the correct answers as if we had just learned basic mathematics, stopping just short of rewarding our good behavior with candy. More impressive to us was the ignorance of youth, becoming wrinkled and dehydrated didn’t mean there should be any different treatment for us compared to the rest of the population though trying to explain this was always hopeless.  Either they didn’t listen or they didn’t care, I say, let them wait another fifty years and see how insufferable it is. I firmly believe that you always get what’s coming to you in life.

Recently, Martha passed away and that opened up some room for a newcomer to the bunch. At the end Martha remained just as sweet as she ever had been. Of course, there were moments when she and I didn’t exactly see eye to eye since she declined to have an opinion on anything. Mostly, she just sat next to me and listened, smiling and crocheting different things for other residents and family members. The nice ones always seem to pass on before the rest of us old tyrants.

The newcomer is named John and he came to us already knowing all the answers to Jeopardy. His eyes have a wild look to them and when he smiles it seems more like a sneering smirk, a cruel up tick at the corners of his lips. I don’t like him much but he sure likes giving me the eyes. He can still move around quickly and restlessly getting comfortable, it will be another month or two before he’d settle into the camphor of sleep that blankets this place. He has nightmares and judging from the ghostly look on his face when he awakes I’d venture to guess that he’s seen some parts of human nature I will be glad to have never had a part in. His tattoos are faded and bleeding into each other and at one point, he must have been an attractive man but now his face is hard and disgruntled.

One particular day as I sat in my seat, I felt a suddenly bolt run right through my whole being and it was as if I had been awaken and jolted back into reality. I looked around the gloomy recreational room and realized that this place was just a dream. Eyeing the piano close to the wall on my right I stood up and as I passed by the television I turned it off.  Silence hung heavily in the room and no one said a single word as I shuffled across the linoleum to the piano. I could feel their eyes watching me tensely as I sat down, putting my crooked pale fingers to the ivory keys and gently getting a feel for what sounded right in my heart. Taking a deep breath, I started to play the liveliest tune I could think of. I played and sang as loud as I wanted and began to get lost in the old days of my lounge singing, a feeling of old familiar belonging swept over me and I was comforted. I knew myself again, I wasn’t a ghost waiting for the light; this detached being who sat in a chair all day watching Jeopardy until it was time for my pills and then sleep. I was alive! The smells of the stale air was life. The temperature of the room was life. The muted neutral colors around me were life, my heart was beating.

As I became engrossed in this sense of rebirth, a gentle hand touched my shoulder and I looked up to see one of the caretakers leaning close to me with a concerned look in her eyes and asked me nicely to stop playing to avoid disrupting the others. I looked around the room, everyone kept their mouths shut.

“Am I bothering anyone?” my voice was flat and cynical.

No one responded.  Turning back to the piano in hopes of reviving my moment, I began to play again and as I did so the caretaker reprimanded me again with a little more force. One of the security guards came over to see what was going on and now I began to feel defiant.  Wasn’t I allowed a little cheerfulness? I’ve spent seventy nine years of my life on my own without being told what to do and now this forty-something is going to tell me that I cannot play a piano? I thought parents were supposed to encourage their children not shut them down, if that is what I am to them. Insolence flared up like a fire, and I wanted to be treated like a human being for a change and not some zombie, shuffled around quietly until I died, and I told her just that. I told her to leave me alone and let me play music.

She complained to the manager, who agreed with her that everyone comes to this rest home to rest. My response was viciously to the point, “Rest is not death and it is temporary.”

John came to my defense, standing half out of his chair and spoke in an easy tone.  “Why don’t you just let her play, for chrissakes? I like it.”

The manager turned to him rambling about policies and complaints of those who paid our bills and how grateful we should be that our families cared for us enough to provide this facility with their hard earned cash. Anger flash in John’s eyes and the animal awakened. For a small man, he stood upright to his full stature and glared mean like at the fat manager.

Speaking quietly, his voice dripped with cold realism. “Now you are going to let her play and anyone that has a problem with it is going to talk to me and I will let them know that every person has a right to be happy in this hovel you call a rest home. If they want to rest, they can go into their rooms and keep their eyes and their door shut.” As John spoke he took some careful steps towards the manager who stepped away, his stare unnerved all of us as he waited for an answer from the manager. The silence and tension in the room was taught like a thread that at any moment could snap. John was clearly not the kind of man I would have dealt with in my life, but then again the economic gratefulness of my children never did provide for the type of life I was accustomed to. The manager walked off in a brisk huff to call my children.

“I don’t understand why you would want to play the piano, mom.” My son asked me later that night. He’d come to the home on his way home from work after he’d received the call that I had been disruptive and rude to other residents of the home.

“I am allowed to enjoy my golden years, Peter.” I responded softly.

“You were disrupting the whole place. People were trying to sleep.”

“It was two o’clock in the afternoon; if a person was trying to sleep they were pretending to be dead.  I will not stand for being spoken to in this manner. You are my son and I am your mother, I deserve better treatment than this. I thought I raised you better. If your son ever spoke to your wife like this you’d make sure he never did it again.” I felt betrayed. I had given so much to them and I was being given so little back in return. Since I’d come to this place, begun to question why so much value was put upon procreation when the offspring grew up without ever having the sense to take care of the injured, weak or elderly. Perhaps that was a downfall on my part for not instilling these manners. I always thought they’d have the sense. Clearly, I was wrong.

“What have I done to you to deserve this, Peter? Have I hurt you or your family? Spoken ill to your wife? If I have, please tell me so that I can make amends.” He looked at me long and hard, choosing his next words carefully.

“Mother, I have to go now but we can talk about this tomorrow in more detail.” He didn’t kiss me on the cheek, he just left.

I rang the buzzer for the nurse and asked to be put into bed, I was getting tired. Down the hall I could hear Jeopardy blaring from the television set.