​​​Chapter Twenty-Six
Wren

The place smells like canned peaches inching past their sell by date. The dining room is settling down, breakfast now coming to a hard close at 10 o’clock. I ignore the strained rumbling in my stomach and then ignore the fact that old peaches are the cause of it. Maybe I can find a pudding cup to swipe.

“Rhonda Zinberg, Cornerstone Club.” The aid at the round desk in the foyer nods Rhonda through. It would be impressive if she wasn’t wearing a sweatsuit like a four-year-old and this wasn’t an old folks’ home.

“There’s someone you need to meet,” Rhonda says. I follow her down the hallway lined with doors. The names on them feel old time Hollywood: Montgomery, Hazel, Edith. The smell is less peaches now, more old age and ointment. My heart beats its bird wings. I feel ridiculous, a combination of marching to the guillotine and finding the answer to a life gone wrong.

Maybe I’m still high.

“Here.” Rhonda says. She doesn’t go in. She doesn’t knock on the door. “Think you’ll be okay?”

“What? You want me to just go in? By myself?” Rhonda rolls her eyes and looks down

the hall. There’s a nurse coming out of the room next door.

“Hi. My, uh...” Rhonda looks at me, assessing what it is exactly she’s looking at. “My...friend would like to visit Mrs. Ling. Do you mind announcing her arrival?” I start to panic, and then there’s the embarrassment worming through my veins. I should have worn better pants. 

“Sure,” the nurse says with a plastic smile. She walks over and opens the door with brisk force. “Knock, knock. Mrs. Ling? I have someone to see you.”

I look for Rhonda who’s already down the hall and giving me a meager thumbs up.

“Won’t you please come in?” There’s a small wisp of a woman drinking tea, her Bible opened next to the saucer. I look uncertain, feel uncertain. I worry if I walk through the door, I’ll burst into flames.

“Don’t be afraid. I don’t bite as much as I used to.” I walk forward as the nurse chuckles and closes the door behind me. I cover the holes in my jeans with my hands.

“Sit. Sit. I’m Eleanor,” Eleanor says with a faint Chinese accent that’s been left in the wash too long. I do what she says because old people make me feel nervous. At least my legs are hidden under the table cloth.

“First time? Cornerstone Club?” Eleanor stops talking so I can nod at her. “Rhonda dear is such a legend around Morningside. Nobody really cares what happens to us in here. But those kids do thanks to her.” Eleanor rubs the pages of her Bible with an absent mind.

“I didn’t choose to join. I was forced.” Might as well tell the old bag the truth, I think. Nobody’s going to mistake me for someone who does community service for funsies.

Eleanor laughs. It’s soft and muffled by a swallow of tea. “Honesty. The best policy. It also helps to determine if I like you or not. I think I do.”

“Well, I’ll at least have someone in that category.” I trail off and look around. The room’s warm with sage on the walls and thick almond colored carpet on the floor. We’re seated at a round, wooden table against the wall, two chairs only. There’s a small couch and chair complete with a coffee table and a small kitchenette standing quietly behind them. The wall opposite has a chest of drawers working double duty as a TV stand and there’s a door to the right of it, slightly ajar. Eleanor’s room.

Old people have all the luck, apparently.

“My son. My son, he’s the one who did all this,” Eleanor says as her eyes trail along the room with mine. “He has a good job, good wife, and kids. I suppose though that’s in spite of me. Not because of.” I stop trailing and land on Eleanor’s face. The woman isn’t lying about honesty.

“I can’t imagine you were a bad mother.” Mom is there again in my head. I’ll talk to her later in the evening when she’s peeled off any trace of Double Dees and Jerry is out bowling with his team. I’ll nod and pretend to understand because if I don’t, Mom’s bound to lose it like she sometimes does. And I’ll plead with her, remind her that we can’t afford a place on our own. How much easier to just weigh the stakes and marry Jerry. How much easier to just try and have a family even if it looks a little different than it used to.

But Mom’s in love with a dead man. 

It’s the one thing I can’t fix.

“Bad comes in all shades. All colors. It’s born when you’re born and lives like a little seed inside your belly. You can grow it or you can give it over. I grew it for a long, long time.” Eleanor bends her head to take another sip. The sprouts of gray hair that have escaped her bun wave at me.

“Is that like a haiku or something?”

“No, haikus are Japanese. Don’t be racist.” The burn is immediate in my face until I see Eleanor’s eyes laughing at me. “I thought your kind was, what’s the word? Chill?” She laughs, this time freed from her tea cup, and it’s a light and beautiful sound.

“I’m not sure chill has ever been the word to describe me.”

“Then what’s the word?”

“Damaged.” It slips out, only to serve my theory that I must still be high. The burn’s back. I look down at my thighs, the skin escaping through denim bars.

“Damaged. Well, you’re going to have to share your stock in that one. One time I punched a wall so hard, I fractured my middle finger. I could no longer punch. I could no longer offer the bird. I had to learn to use my words.” I’m pretty sure my eyes are black-ringed saucers.

“Why? What happened?”

“Oh, nothing short of a typical day, I’m sure. Let’s see. Sticky-handed children who loved me. Patient husband who loved me. They just weren’t a part of my plan. I mean, I suppose they were, but I wanted one of those. Oh what’s it called? Do over? Yes. I wanted a do over.” Eleanor strokes at the thin pages of her Bible again. “There is no such thing, though. There is only here and now and whether you’re willing to stack it all in your hands or not. I wasn’t. So I punched.” I’m alarmed to see the tears in Eleanor’s eyes. I feel trapped in a huge vat of awkward.

“Tim. My husband. He iced my hand. He said ‘There, there, Eleanor. No more sad.’ And for Tim, it was that easy. But I don’t know if that man really understood.” A tear slips, moves down to her mouth. I look back at my thighs. “It becomes a part of you. It hardens all the organs, and if you ignore it, it won’t ignore you. There’s no giving it away. Or so I thought.” I think of my anger. The way it braids through me like hair.

“You were wrong?” I find the courage to ask it, eyes still on skin and jean.

“I had been wrong my whole life,” Eleanor says, and I sip the truth like tea.

#

“SO, MRS. LING?” I CAN tell Rhonda tries to ask it casually as she noses out of Morningside’s parking lot. I don’t feel like talking. I feel like sniffing glue until I pass out.

“She’s okay,” I lie. Mrs. Ling is more than okay. She’s like a box I’m forbidden to look into, but I do anyways. And what I see is sun and light and concrete. Because I feel my heart break out of me, just a little bit. But that feeling comes to a halt when I think of Dad’s dangling feet.

“The woman changed my life,” Rhonda says.

“That so?” I say, lost in the thoughts outside my window. “So every Saturday, huh?”

“Mostly, yeah. Meetings every Monday. I try to do a once a month thing where we all hang out. Eat pizza. You know, be kids or whatever.”

“Oh. Wonder what that feels like.” My head against glass, I watch the trees spin by, pretend they’re magnolias.

I press an inconspicuous hand to my face, drying the tears on my right cheek. Mrs. Ling is free from her shame, I can see that much. But there’s still a hurt there from letting her children down. I think of Mom and smirk. Misery loves company. The phrase passes through like a whisper in my skull. I look over at a frowning Rhonda. I smirk again.