‘It’s OK.’ They know each other so well that he doesn’t have to explain. She knows he’s upset. ‘Wade and I came out here to see our old kindergarten teacher, remember old Mrs Earlham from Pierce Point?’
He doesn’t, but he needs to release her while he can still contain himself. If he doesn’t he’ll start ranting, and that is the best-case scenario. ‘OK then,’ he says nicely, ‘I’ll let you go. Tell her I said hey.’
‘You aren’t here to visit an old party, are you?’
He shakes his head.
‘I know you’re following the kid.’
‘You what?’
‘Dan Carteret, Lucy’s son.’
‘Who says?’
‘Somebody on Coral Shores saw you. Everybody knows. What do you want with him?’
‘I’m just following, it’s no big deal.’
‘He’s a nice kid,’ she says. ‘Just, whatever you do, don’t hurt him.’
Walker cries, ‘I’m here to protect him!’
‘Dear one, here’s Wade. I have to go. Oh, Walker, take care!’
41
Dan
‘You never know what you’re gonna get. Sometimes she’s all talkatalka, and the rest, she just stares. You’re not leaving now.’ Steffy pushes Dan into the room and closes the door as far as the institutional doorstop permits, giving it a kick to make her point. She peers into the Geri-chair where her great-grandmother is tipped back, apparently to help blood make it all the way up there to her brain. In spite of the touch of lipstick put on by an aide, she looks transparent, like what’s left after an insect sheds its carapace.
‘Oh.’ Dan has never seen anybody this old. ‘Oh!’
‘GRAMMY, ARE YOU IN THERE?’
Where she had been staring at the TV in its ceiling mount, old Mrs Henderson turns to see who yelled. She lights up like a paper lantern.
Triumphant, Steffy hisses, ‘See? She knows me. That’s why somebody has to come.’
‘Can she hear us?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Hello, Mrs Henderson.’
Just as suddenly, she lapses. All the lights go off inside.
Sighing, Steffy studies the lunch tray with its plastic dishes and plastic-looking food. ‘GRAMMY, YOU HAVEN’T TOUCHED YOUR CUPCAKE. HAVE A BITE.’
Dan turns to go.
‘LOOK, GRAMMY, IT’S CHOCOLATE. Sugar usually perks her right up.’ Steffy will say anything to keep him here. ‘When she gets going it’s a riot. Plus, you’re looking for something or somebody, right? Give her a minute to perk up, OK? She knows some amazing shit.’
‘She doesn’t look very perky to me.’
Everything is in stasis here. Dan delivered Steffy as promised, and when she asked him to come up to the room it was clear that she needed it so he walked point, seeing her up the stairs and down terrible pastel halls lined with saccharine repros chosen to help people forget that they came here to die. He kept Steffy talking to cover the babble in the health care wing, which is where they are. They talked about her boyfriend Carter, but not really; they talked about why stain-proof flooring, why the wide bedroom doors; they talked about Nenna not at all. They jabbered, trying to blur the occasional outraged cry coming from rooms they passed, the spontaneous groan, but old voices knife into a sensitive nerve. Dan came inside Golden Acres because the girl needed it, but he can’t stay. He doesn’t have the time.
‘If she comes to, tell her I said hi.’
‘Give me a minute!’ Steffy’s fingers lock on his arm like teeth. She yanks him into the space between Mrs Henderson and the TV. She mutes the set. ‘That’s better, isn’t it, Gram? Dan,’ she says in her mother’s exact ceremonial voice, ‘this is Grammy Henderson.’
‘I don’t think she’s in there any more.’
‘Fuck she isn’t. Grammy!’ She ratchets up the volume. ‘Grammy, this is my friend Dan.’
‘Look, I really can’t . . .’
‘You have to! GRAMMY, THIS IS DAN.’
‘Hello, Grammy.’
‘Her name is Blanche.’
‘Hello, Blanche.’
Waiting, Dan is aware of life going on elsewhere – conversations hitting the same dead end in rooms all along the hall. Sudden, inadvertent cries. Half Fort Jude’s history is deposited here, stored inside of old people a lot like this one, who remember, but can’t explain. Did Steffy’s great-grandmother know the incendiary Lorna Archambault? God knows she’s old enough, but at the moment she is beyond speech. He can wait forever and never find out. He imagines every room in Golden Acres is like this one, dense with history, but history under lock and key.
In a city where everyone seems to know everything that goes on, these old parties have probably processed and stored all the information he needs. If age didn’t kill, they could tell him everything. Solve his life. Decades worth