Who Do You Think You Are

Phoebe. She pictured herself going to Hanratty and looking after Flo, living with her, taking care of her for as long as was necessary. She thought how she would clean and paint Flo’s kitchen, patch the shingles over the leaky spots (that was one of the things the letter had mentioned), plant flowers in the pots, and make nourishing soup. She wasn’t so far gone as to imagine Flo fitting comfortably into this picture, settling down to a life of gratitude. But the crankier Flo got, the milder and more patient Rose would become, and who, then, could accuse her of egotism and frivolity?
    This vision did not survive the first two days of being home.
    “W OULD YOU LIKE a pudding?” Rose said.
    “Oh, I don’t care.”
    The elaborate carelessness some people will show, the gleam of hope, on being offered a drink.
    Rose made a trifle. Berries, peaches, custard, cake, whipped cream and sweet sherry.
    Flo ate half the bowlful. She dipped in greedily, not bothering to transfer a portion to a smaller bowl.
    “That was lovely,” she said. Rose had never heard such an admission of grateful pleasure from her. “Lovely,” said Flo and sat remembering, appreciating, belching a little. The suave dreamy custard, the nipping berries, robust peaches, luxury of sherry-soaked cake, munificence of whipped cream.
    Rose thought that she had never done anything in her life that came near pleasing Flo as this did.
    “I’ll make another soon.”
    Flo recovered herself. “Oh well. You do what you like.”
    Rose drove out to the County Home. She was conducted through it. She tried to tell Flo about it when she came back.
    “Whose home?” said Flo.
    “No, the County Home.”
    Rose mentioned some people she had seen there. Flo would not admit to knowing any of them. Rose spoke of the view and the pleasant rooms. Flo looked angry; her face darkened and she stuck out her lip. Rose handed her a mobile she had bought for fifty cents in the County Home Crafts Center. Cutout birds of blue and yellow paper were bobbing and dancing, on undetectable currents of air.
    “Stick it up your arse,” said Flo.
    Rose put the mobile up in the porch and said she had seen the trays coming up, with supper on them.
    “They go to the dining room if they’re able, and if they’re not they have trays in their rooms. I saw what they were having.
    “Roast beef, well done, mashed potatoes and green beans, the frozen not the canned kind. Or an omelette. You could have a mushroom omelette or a chicken omelette or a plain omelette, if you liked.”
    “What was for dessert?”
    “Ice cream. You could have sauce on it.” “What kind of sauce was there?” “Chocolate. Butterscotch. Walnut.”
    “I can’t eat walnuts.”
    “There was marshmallow too.”
    O UT AT THE HOME the old people were arranged in tiers. On the first floor were the bright and tidy ones. They walked around, usually with the help of canes. They visited each other, played cards. They had singsongs and hobbies. In the Crafts Center they painted pictures, hooked rugs, made quilts. If they were not able to do things like that they could make rag dolls, mobiles like the one Rose bought, poodles and snowmen which were constructed of Styrofoam balls, with sequins for eyes; they also made silhouette pictures by placing thumbtacks on traced outlines; knights on horseback, battleships, airplanes, castles.
    They organized concerts; they held dances; they had checker tournaments.
    “Some of them say they are the happiest here they have ever been in their lives.”
    Up one floor there was more television watching, there were more wheelchairs. There were those whose heads drooped, whose tongues lolled, whose limbs shook uncontrollably. Nevertheless sociability was still flourishing, also rationality, with occasional blanks and absences.
    On the third floor you might get some surprises.
    Some of them up there had given up speaking.
    Some had given up moving, except for odd jerks and tosses of the head, flailing of the arms, that seemed to be without purpose or control.
    Nearly all had given up worrying about whether they were wet or dry.
    Bodies were fed and wiped, taken up and tied in chairs, untied and put to bed. Taking in oxygen, giving out carbon dioxide, they continued to participate in the life of the world.
    Crouched in her crib, diapered, dark as a nut, with three tufts of hair like dandelion floss sprouting from her head, an old woman was making loud shaky noises.
    “Hello Aunty,”