MIRELLA | Annette Leddy
It’s just time going by, she reflected. It’s not what can or cannot be. It’s not something you can measure. It comes and goes, comes and goes.
At times, she was in a hotel room by the sea, then a house on a hill, then a ship. They all existed in time, in places she knew and had traveled to or left. Now she couldn’t leave, she knew that, and went from her room to the eating room, then back, then back again, then again. Sometimes she did stretches with the other guests, sometimes drawings.
Dominique swept in and out of her room, to help her change, to give her pills, to explain.
“Who’s that man in my room?”
Asleep in the bed across from hers, he was a shriveled sack with a bald head and sunken cheeks. Despite his size, he snored like the machines you use to clean the rug.
Dominique looked at her, a touch dismayed. “That’s your husband.”
“Are you sure it’s not my grandfather?”
“Mirella. He’s your husband. You’ve been married seventy years.”
“Seventy years,” Mirella echoed, trying to let it sink in.
“Seventy,” Dominique repeated. She had a little accent because she was from a country in Africa. She herself had an accent because she was from Italy. They had talked about that when Mirella first arrived, a week or a year ago, what it was like having an accent in America, and Dominique had sent her a smile from the heart. From then on, she had treated Mirella with special kindness.
“How old am I?”
“You are ninety-one.”
“Ninety-one,” she repeated. That wasn’t possible. She would ask her sister Nella when she saw her. “Is my sister coming today?”
“You mean your daughter?”
She wasn’t sure. Her daughter Madeline looked just like Nella, with dark thick hair, and both were bossy.
“Your daughter Madeline is coming later today with your daughter Alice. Your son and grandchildren will be here later in the week because of the holiday.”
“Christmas,” she guessed.
“That’s right,” Dominque said.
Panic seized her. “I don’t have presents for them. No cookies either.”
“You don’t need to worry. Your children will take care of everything.”
Dominique could be so mistaken. Her children would never take care of everything.
She ticked through the given tasks: create menu, make list of ingredients, buy the ones she didn’t have. Two or three days ahead, start cooking. While cookies or casseroles were baking, wash the floors, dust. On weekends, when someone could watch the kids, buy gifts, or sew gifts, or—
The man in the bed coughed. He stuck a big pad under his head and stared at her with bulging blue eyes.
“Mirella,” he said. “Amore.”
“Good morning,” she said. Her husband’s name was Roger, but that man was not Roger. Roger wore glasses and had a bitter smile. His hair was dark, lightly streaked with grey.
“How did you sleep?” he asked her.
“Not very well. I had so many dreams. I kept waking and hearing voices and footsteps.”
“What?” he screamed.
Dominique went to him and took little things from a box on the bedside table. He turned his head to one side and then the other so she could put the things in his ears.
“What did you say?” he asked.
“I heard voices and footsteps.”
“I didn’t hear anything!” he said, as if she were making it up.
“It’s quiet here at night,” Dominque observed.
Everything she said was wrong, and no one believed her. She hadn’t wanted to come here on this endless tour. She wanted to go back to her home with her husband and children, in their single-story split level with the garden she had planted from seed and the yellow kitchen. Her husband had a good government job, and her children were lively, and her best friend Gloria lived next door. The problem was the Valley heat. And—there were other problems, but she couldn’t recall them.
“Where are we?”
“You are in a home for people with memory issues,” Dominque said.
“Windchime!” the man screamed.
“But where? In Hadley?”
“No, stupid.” he said. “In Mill Valley. We haven’t lived in Hadley since 1969.”
“What year is it now?”
“2019,” said Dominque gently.
Again, she felt rebuked. Tears burned her eyes.
“Roger do not call your wife stupid. It hurts her.”
“I didn’t call her stupid,” he asserted. “I said we don’t live in Hadley.”
“Her memory is worse than yours now, and if you love her, you should be kind.”
“I love her! I have loved her since the first minute I saw her in Italy! I was a soldier and she was a lovely signorina.”
Dominique gave him a stern look. “I need to go now,” she said. “I’ll be back later.”
She walked out the door and left her alone with the man who claimed to be Roger and to love her.
“Mirella, help me. I want to get up.”
She got out of her bed and went to stand by the side of his bed. She wondered what to do.
He held out his hands. “Pull me up.”
She pulled until he was sitting up, then he swung his bony white legs around and placed his feet on the floor.
“Hold my arm so I can stand.”
He stood up. He was wobbly at first but then steadier.
“Hold my arm. We’re going to the bathroom.”
They went through the door in their room to the toilet. She held him while he stood and peed. She looked at his pee in the toilet.
“It’s dark,” she said.
“So what. Now help me back to bed.”
He sat on the bed and patted the space next to him for her to sit down too.
“Give me a kiss,” he said.
She let him kiss her. His mouth felt familiar.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” he said.
“Why are we here?” she asked.
He pointed to his forehead. “Our minds. We’re losing them.”
He kissed her a few more times. It was like being kissed by a stranger and yet not. He might be Roger.
He put his face near the clock on his bedside table. “It’s almost time for breakfast! Let’s get dressed.”
He stood and gestured for her to stand and hold his arm again. She did that, and they walked to the big box the clothes were in. He opened the doors and pulled out a shirt and things to cover his legs. He put them on, not changing his underwear.
“A belt. Get my belt.”
She didn’t remember that word. She handed him the box of paper for your nose.
“Not Kleenex! I said a belt!
She grabbed a thing for feet, though she sensed it wasn’t right.
“No!” He pulled the waist of his pants out from his body. They were five or six inches too wide. “A belt, stupid! So my pants don’t fall down.”
Again, tears filled her eyes. Roger’s face turned blurry, but she could still see the angry look on it. She walked back to her bed and lay down.
He picked up his stick, went to the door and stuck his head out. “Dominique! Come back!”
He came and stood next to her bed and stared down at her, leaning on his stick.
She said nothing. If only he would go away. If only the whole place would disappear and she could be again in her yellow kitchen, throwing together an apple pie, the house humming with children. Or sitting in art class with her teacher Lyndon, working with charcoal, rubbing and smearing and adding a hard line over it. Those days were still there someplace in California or Italy, but to go there she would have to get off this ship or hotel. And how did she do that?
Dominique stood over her. “Hi, Mirella. Are you feeling ok?” She felt Dominque’s hand on her forehead, then on her hand. The warmth from Dominique’s flesh was wonderful.
“There, Roger, you see?” Dominque said. “Even a little kindness makes her smile.”
“I’m kind!” he said, still sounding angry. “I just asked her to give me my belt.” He held his pant waist out from his body to show Dominque how big it was. “She handed me Kleenex.”
“She’s losing her words,” Dominique said. “You need to be much more patient.” She let go of her hand to pick up a long leather strip from the chair and thread it through the top of his pants. He fastened the strip over his stomach.
“See, Mirella,” he said, pointing, “this is a belt. B-E-L-T.”
She looked at him. Had he always been so mean?
“Come on, Mirella,” Dominique said. “Let’s get dressed for breakfast.” She brought a pink sweatshirt and grey sweatpants to the bed and helped her up to seating position. “Are you hungry?”
She nodded. “I’m famished,” she replied. Was she ever this hungry before?
“She knows the word ‘famished,’” Roger observed sulkily. He had retreated to his own bed and watched curiously as Dominque took her clothes off. She was naked in front of them, but she didn’t care. Her body wasn’t her body anymore. Once she’d had full, firm breasts with large pale brown nipples. And shapely legs. Now her body was a big sack with small sacks attached to it. And inside were other small sacks, slowly wasting away.
Dominique tied her shoes and helped her to her feet. She showed her herself in the mirror. “Don’t you look nice?” she asked.
She shook her head no. The person in the mirror couldn’t possibly be her.
Here was what she looked like: tall and slender, with fine blonde hair permed to frame her face like a halo. She always wore a sheath, which showed off her figure, and they were either orange, green, or white, which flattered her pale olive skin. She wore red lipstick and no other make-up. Her only jewelry her wedding ring.
They were sitting at the little table for two, their own table by the window. The waiter came to ask what they wanted.
“Soft boiled egg,” Roger said, “in the shell.”
“Would you like some orange juice with that?”
‘OK.”
“And you, Mirella?”
“French toast. Eggs. Bacon. Coffee. Orange juice.” Sharp hunger pangs seared her stomach just from looking at the photos of the food, which had their names next to them.
The waiter smiled at her. “You’re hungry!”
“Famished.”
“Famished,” the Roger echoes in a jeering way.
The waiter went away, and the Roger looked at her sternly.
“You’re getting fat.”
His words were a sword thrust in her back. He had always been critical, at least she thought so, but she had been better able to handle it when she was younger.
She looked down at her abdomen. It was much flabbier than she remembered, though she had always had a roll there, but she used to wear a girdle that concealed it. And her long arms and legs distracted people’s gaze away from her roll.
Here everyone wore the same stretchy pants in ugly colors, like a pajama uniform that wasn’t either pajamas or a uniform. It was like the slumber party Alice had once in her teenage years, a roomful of girls in pajamas, but here with old people in a pajama party that never ended, although a face disappeared every month or so and a new one came.
They were all waiting their turns to die. But when she told her kids that they said not to think about it.
“We are waiting our turn,” she said.
“For food you mean?” He talked so loudly. Her ears kind of hurt.
“To die,” she explained.
“I know,” he agreed. Roger had never coated with sugar. “It’s like a holding space and then we step off the cliff.”
She nodded, then felt her eyes fill with tears.
“I want to be in my home to die,” she wailed.
“Me too!” he exclaimed. “How could our kids put us here? I never thought they’d do it.”
They stared at each other, sad and angry.
It was all Nella’s fault. Nella had put her here. Nella was angry at her. But she didn’t know what for. Jealousy and disapproval for so many things like a tangled ball of yarn. For moving to America. For not sewing as well as she did. For being younger, weak, and afraid when bombs exploded at night in the nearby fields. For washing the dishes with floor soap – No! that was another Nella, her daughter. But her name was not Nella. What was it? She waited for the name to come by, like a certain seat on the merry-go-round, like the lion seat she always waited for, then jumped on as soon as she could.
The food arrived. She trembled at the sweet smell of the French toast with its dusting of powdered sugar. Fiercely she devoured it, wielding her fork and knife, like weapons.
Then so fast she was done and calmly sipping her coffee. The animal within her curled up and went to sleep. Again, she was woman.
She looked at the Roger. He was eating tiny teaspoonfuls of egg from the shell as if he could barely stand to swallow.
“Are you done?” he asked sarcastically.
She felt a big breath come out of her. Don’t cry, she told herself. Feel the delicious warm liquid on your tongue.
She closed her eyes, hearing the murmuring of the other diners all around them. She remembered another hotel, but she couldn’t say where it was.
“What are you thinking about?” the Roger asked.
“I don’t know,” she replied, shrugging her shoulders. “Memories come and go but I can’t place them. Remember when the kids drew timelines in school? I need one of those.”
“It won’t help,” he said.
She closed her eyes again. They were on a ship. The captain had invited them to sit at his table, and he made a toast to them, to their marriage, to love that had surmounted the obstacles of war.
She felt panicked. What had she done? Couldn’t she go back? She wanted to descend from the ship on a rope ladder to a little boat that would speed her back to Italy while Roger stayed on the ocean liner, gliding to his own home.
The other passengers, from many countries, beautifully dressed, held their glasses high.
Annette Leddy is a fiction writer and author of the novel Earth Still. Leddy, who is also an oral historian for artist foundations, held the position of New York Collector for the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art. She has published essays and reviews on artists connected to Surrealism, Futurism, or Conceptual Art, and co-authored Farewell to Surrealism: the Dyn Circle in Mexico.