West Wing (Fifth Visit)

Al was seated at the head of the corridor again, just by the door of his new room. Between times he must have been moved there. The door with his name on it with the floral border was closed and we didn’t enter this time. Stan in the chair on the other side turned out to be a Lancashire man. Soon after arrival his wife wheeled up and came over to chat; on the last visit she had also put in an appearance. At the time of their marriage she had been nineteen and Stan an especially handsome twenty-one, as the photos she brought over later proved. The wife herself was in for some respite, she said. Stan had been in the home a number of years. There had been a tragic suicide of the son in his early forties; a daughter had three children, two autistic and one with Aspergers. One of these, or one of the great-grandkids possibly, was a high achiever and worked in robotics. Stan had been a footballer and cricketer, as well as lawn bowler here in Australia. Out near Manchester the wife had been a member of an operatic group and the pair met at church. Al would not have heard any of it, nor been much interested if he had even years past. He sat in the corner of the couch eating the grapes that had been brought in. By the desk of the attendant Doris the jabberer sat facing away with a pair of dolls with her in her chair. She was giving the woman a hard time directing the unceasing stream in her direction. Later she made a number of us laugh when she told the woman to get fucked. At one point the poor Filipina, the attendant, came around the front of the desk to wipe the dolls with a wet cloth for some reason and then dry them for Doris. None of this was noticed by Al. The Australian had seemed a better option than The Age and Al leafed through it reading a number of the columns on a number of the pages. The Business pages he had discarded. Later he leafed through the journal that happened to have been left on the side table, finding some amusement in the description of old Trevor, the tedious bore at Cirino. In the passage Trevor had been described both as a corpse on his feet and a walking ghost. This seemed to have been part of the amusement for Al, who was already near the half way mark of the nine months the doctors at Footscray had given him. The old Nonna who wheeled up during the visit must have been new, just arrived at the home. Coming up close to the couch she had surprised initially. At first she spoke in an Italian that was not understood. Reverting to English, she said she wanted a seat on the couch. Classical sweet old thing. With a little pressing she took a few of the grapes. For the most part she sat looking at Doris and listening to her, grave and stony-faced, shaking her head slowly. In the photos by Doris’s door up near the end of the wing she and her husband looked a fine young Italian couple in what may have been a wedding portrait. The old Nonna either knew, or assumed Doris to be Italian. She spoke to her a couple of times in answer to some of the rattle. The room at the end of the wing on Al’s side of the corridor, opposite Doris up toward the street, held a figure in the bed that was all jaw. There was nothing else, just protruding jaw. The head on the pillow with the sheets up high was tilted far back and the jaw bone pointed at the ceiling. Three Filipinas, two Indians and an African were attending on this visit. The strange thing was the minor kind of shock at the scene. In fact there had been more than a little light-heartedness. It may have been different had Al been more alert.