Sandy knew this change had come about because of Edith Moser.
EDITH was alone in the courtyard in her wheelchair, her eyes closed, her face turned up to the afternoon sun. The courtyard was an alcove of sorts, a concrete patio enclosed on three sides by the exterior of the building. An arbor extending from the nursing-home roof covered half the courtyard and an assortment of patio furniture. Spaced intermittently around the patio were a few large flowerpots, newly planted with petunias and pansies that had yet to take hold. Two other flowerpots were without flowers, containing instead sand with a variety of cigarette butts speared into it. The open side of the courtyard faced west to the lawn behind the structure, which rolled out to an adjacent pasture where a few spotted cattle could be seen grazing behind their wire fence. The far side of the pasture swept up a slope and into a thick stand of hardwoods and pine. Edith’s chair sat at the far open edge of the patio, the wheels locked in place, exactly as Sandy had positioned her a few hours ago. Sandy stepped quietly to her side and squatted by the wheelchair.
Edith’s face caught and held the afternoon light as if it were emanating from her to the sun. Her lips turned up in just the hint of a smile, more like a grin, as if she knew something no one else would ever have the insight to perceive. The skin of her face was loose, hanging slightly, but still soft and largely unwrinkled. Her legs, stick-thin and virtually useless, were propped on the foot supports of the chair, covered by the robe and blanket Sandy had wrapped her in before bringing her outside. Edith’s hands lay folded in her lap, webbed in thick blue veins under waxy skin as soft as that of her face. Her arms were only slightly more useful than her legs.
Sandy looked at her face, then reached out to gently touch one of Edith’s hands in hopes of not waking her too suddenly. Her hand still hovered just above the old woman’s when Edith spoke.
“I know you’re there, you. Come to take me away from this glorious spring day and drag me back inside my little cave, haven’t you?” Edith’s eyes remained closed, her face still held out to the sunlight. She lifted one hand, found Sandy’s, took it in her own, then lifted the other hand and began softly to pet the hand of the younger woman beside her.
“You have to go in at some point, Edith.” Sandy relaxed under the touch of the old woman. “Thought I’d get you settled before I leave.”
“Just until the sun reaches the ridge, please, dear? Won’t be but a few minutes longer. Please.”
“Of course, Edith.”
“Thank you, dear. You’ve made an old pagan so happy.” A grin etched itself onto the old woman’s face.
Edith Moser was a marvel to Sandy. When she became a resident of the nursing home, shortly after Sandy started working there, she was very old then, close to ninety. Now she was physically capable of little more than drawing air into lungs, pumping blood through veins, and holding her face up to the sun. As Edith’s body grew more frail, her mind and voice, in direct proportion, seemed to Sandy to increase in sharpness and clarity. Edith had spent her childhood in her family’s home by the lower Ripshin on the old river road. When Edith was a child the river had, in fact, been just the Ripshin River, there being no hydroelectric dam yet in place, no Willard Lake to divide the upper from the lower. The house was a rickety old two-story thing propped up on a foundation of river stones. It was a “rough and mean” place, she told Sandy. As soon as she was old enough, Edith left that house on the river. She hired on at the furniture plant in Sherwood and worked her way up to line supervisor at a time when women were rarely in charge of anything. Never married, she eventually built a little four-room cottage on the riverside land that was transferred to her after a chimney fire consumed the old house with both her parents in it. She lived along the river and worked in the furniture plant until she was forced to retire on a union pension, which she could still count on in those days. She’d known all along the risks of loneliness that a solitary life could leave her with, especially now, in her old age. But, as she told Sandy, the risks that came with being “stuffed into a life” of someone else’s choosing were far worse. “A steep price,” she told Sandy, but worth it. When she realized she’d grown too old and “tattered” to physically care for herself much longer, she gave away her modest possessions, sold the little house on the river, sold her car, and made preparations to move into the nursing home. She’d made all the arrangements. She drove herself to the nursing home near Damascus, where she met the boy who bought her old Ford, gave him the keys and title to the car, and, leaning on her cane, walked into her last home.
It had been a bit slow at first, but soon enough Edith had broken through Sandy’s rigid clinical shell, demanded that she recognize that Edith, like the other residents, was more than a regimen of clinical tasks to be tended to, was still a person inside this “raggedy sack of bones” and that “you’d better get that through your head right now if you and I are ever gonna be friends.” Sandy had felt a layer of herself peeled away and found Edith, another woman who refused to live inside the lines someone else had drawn around her.
When Vernon had returned that autumn and it had all happened, Edith had, of course, heard the story, the public facts, as well as the flurry of gossip that got stirred up around it all. She had taken in what she needed to know and winnowed out the rest. While others whispered and speculated, Edith left judgment and insinuation to “those other fools.” During those first afternoons, so much like this one, Sandy found herself beside Edith’s chair, watching the sunset while the old woman patted her hand, stroked her hair, and demanded nothing of her. With Keefe there was something like love, for certain, but they kept each other at arm’s length, that affection sustaining but never reaching fully into their separate selves. Margie was a mother duck, nudging her fledgling out into deeper water. But Edith understood. Understood her. Understood it all.
Sandy dropped to her knees and sat back on her heels. Edith’s patting ceased, but she kept Sandy’s hand held lightly between both of hers. Her eyes opened slowly, and the grin broadened across her face. The sun was now close to pressing onto the ridge across the pasture.
“You see, sun’s almost touching it now. Told you it wouldn’t be but a bit longer.”
“I’m guessing you enjoyed your day outside,” Sandy said.
“Oh my, yes, dear. Certainly better than being in there with all those smelly old people.” The grin returned, more impish than before, and Sandy had to chuckle along with Edith. “Actually, things got a bit exciting at one point.”
“What happened?” Sandy asked.
“Big old red-tailed hawk sailed right in over the pasture and landed just up there on the roof.” Edith’s eyes trailed up to the roof to their left. “Such a beautiful bird. I do so admire such creatures. Not a lick of nonsense about them. All business.”
“Yes, so beautiful and powerful,” Sandy said.
“She just sat there, taking it all in for a moment. And then she turned her eye on me. Gave me such a look, I swear, as if she was giving serious thought to carrying me off for a little lunchtime snack. Though I don’t know that this old carcass could have provided much of a meal.”
Sandy chuckled again and gave a soft squeeze to Edith’s hand.
“Really now, dear. When you think about it, it wouldn’t be such a bad way to go. At least be of some use to something. Sort of like being recycled, don’t you think?”
Sandy smiled and leaned her head to the side of Edith’s leg. The old woman lifted one hand and began to stroke the younger woman’s hair. “What happened then?” Sandy asked.
“You see those little sparrows over there?” A half dozen house sparrows hopped about the courtyard, searching for edible morsels. “Well,
