Chapter 16: Evan
EVAN
Two days later, I wake up at the crack of dawn after another restless night. Rather than laze in bed like a bum, I’m up with the sun to take Daisy out for a walk on the beach, then give her a bath in the driveway to get her looking all shiny and clean. After getting dressed in my nicest outfit that falls between funeral attire and dirtbag, I clip a leash on Daisy and head back to the kitchen for another cup of coffee.
When I find Cooper and Mac eating breakfast on the deck, I pop my head out of the sliding glass door. “Hey. Just so you know, I’m taking Daisy out for a few hours.”
“Where?” Cooper grunts with a mouthful of waffles.
“Sit down,” Mac tells me. “We made plenty. Have you eaten yet?”
“Nah, I’m good. I picked up a shift volunteering at the seniors’ home. The lady on the phone said old folks love dogs, so I’m bringing Daisy.”
“Is that like a euphemism for something?” she asks, laughing as she turns to Cooper for the punchline.
My brother looks as bewildered as his girlfriend sounds. “If it is, I don’t know what
it’s code for.”
“Alright, gotta run. Oh, by the way,” I tell Cooper, “I’m taking your truck.” Then I slap the door shut before he can respond.
I can only imagine the conversation they’re having in my wake.
Has Evan gone nuts? Obviously he’s not volunteering anywhere, right?
Well, joke’s on them, because I certainly fucking am. My last conversation with Gen, followed by my chat with Billy the other night, got me thinking about what “getting my life together” actually looks like. Truth be told, I hadn’t thought my life was so scattered to begin with. It’s not as if I’m a total deadbeat. I’ve got a job—my own business, partly. I have a house and a motorcycle. An old Jeep I spend more time fixing up than driving.
Plenty of people I grew up with around here aspired to a lot less. And a lot of people would have put money on me ending up a lot worse. Still, if all that isn’t enough for Gen, fine. I can do better. She thinks I can’t change? Watch me.
Starting today, I’m hella upstanding. Easing up on the drinking. No more fights. I’m officially on a mission of self-improvement, a complete Good Boy retrofit. Which, according to Google, includes volunteer work.
So bring on the seniors.
At the nursing home, Daisy is psyched at all the new, weird smells. Her little tail excitedly smacks the linoleum floor as she tugs on her leash, anxious to explore, while I check in at the front desk and introduce myself.
A volunteer coordinator named Elaine meets me in the lobby, offering a broad smile in greeting. “Evan! Nice to meet you in person! We always appreciate visitors.” She shakes my hand before sinking to one knee to greet Daisy. “And we love having pretty girls around!”
I watch as the middle-aged woman fawns
over Daisy, scratching behind her ears and dodging that tongue that just last night got into the garbage again.
This dog doesn’t even understand how easy she’s got it.
“Yeah, well, we like to give back,” I say, then regret how skeezy it sounds coming from me.
Elaine takes us on a tour of the two-story facility. Honestly, it’s less creepy than I imagined. I had pictured something at a cross between hospital and asylum, but this place isn’t spooky at all. No one is wandering around dead-eyed in a nightshirt muttering to themselves. It simply looks like a condo building with hospital handrails on the walls.
“We underwent a major renovation a few years ago. We have a full-service restaurant that serves three meals every day, plus a café and coffee shop where our residents can grab a snack and sit with friends. Of course, for our less mobile residents, we deliver meals to their rooms.”
Elaine proceeds to tell me about activities they organize as we pass one of the community rooms, where the old folks are sitting around easels, painting. Apparently, this is where most of my volunteer hours will be spent.
“Do you have any special skills or talents?” she asks. “Play an instrument, maybe?”
“Uh, no, nothing like that, I’m afraid.” I did spend a few months in middle school thinking I might take up the guitar, but that shit’s complicated. “I can build stuff, mostly. Just about anything.”
“Crafts, then,” she says with a placating smile that I choose to ignore. “And of course, our residents enjoy when four-legged friends come by. So we can set up a schedule for that as well.”
Down one of the residential halls, Elaine pokes her head in an open door with a quiet knock. “Arlene, may we come in? You have a
special visitor.”
Arlene, a tiny pixie of a white-haired woman, sits in a recliner watching her television. She waves us in with a frail hand that looks like it might snap off if she moves too quickly. But she’s smiling the second her cloudy eyes land on Daisy.
“Arlene, this is Evan and Daisy. They’ll be volunteering here,” Elaine says. “Arlene is one of our favorite residents. She’s going to outlast all of us, isn’t that right?”
Then, like shoving a kid into the deep end of the pool to make him figure out how to swim, Elaine abandons Daisy and me to the whims of Arlene and the Weather Channel.
“You better bring the car into the garage, Jerry,” Arlene says to me, while petting Daisy, who has hopped up in her lap now. “TV says it’s going to rain.”
I don’t respond at first, confused. But as she keeps chatting up a storm, it quickly becomes evident she thinks I’m someone named Jerry. Her husband, I take it.
I’m clueless about nursing home etiquette, so I’m not sure if I’m allowed to sit on the edge of the old lady’s bed. But there’s only one chair in the room, and Arlene is sitting in it. So I remain standing, awkwardly sliding my hands in my back pockets.
“Is your brother still up north?” she asks after the weather guy remarks on a line of severe thunderstorms moving up the New England coast. “You should make sure he replaced those gutters like you told him to, Jerry. He doesn’t want more leaks like last season.”
I nod briefly. “Yeah, I’ll tell him.”
She goes on like that for more than an hour, and I don’t know what to do other than play along. I mean, how are you supposed to respond to someone who probably has dementia? Is it like waking a sleepwalker? Do you wake a sleepwalker? Hell if I know. It seems the kind of thing they
should put in a brochure or something. In fact, I’m starting to think Elaine is a terrible volunteer coordinator and that this gig absolutely should come with some training.
“Jerry,” Arlene says during a commercial. She’s made me change the channel five times in the past five minutes because she never seems to remember what she’s been watching, “I think I’d like a bath. Will you help me to the tub?”
“Uhh …”
Nope. I’m noping out. I draw the line at stripping little old ladies. Plus, Daisy’s starting to get a bit restless, jumping down from Arlene’s lap and sniffing around the room.
“Why don’t I find someone to come help?” I suggest.
“Oh no, that’s not necessary, Jerry. You’re all the help I need.” Smiling brightly, Arlene starts to stand, then drops back down in her chair, unsteady.
“Here,” I say, helping her to her feet. The moment she’s upright, she tightly holds on to my arm. “How about we hit that call button and—”
“Arlene, sweetie, where you trying to go?” A big guy in white scrubs walks into the room and pries Arlene out of my arms.
I glance at the newcomer. “She was having trouble getting up, so—”
“Jerry is going to give me a bath,” Arlene says happily, walking with the orderly’s assistance over to her bed.
“You had a bath this morning,” he reminds her as he helps her take off her slippers and get in bed. “How about a nap before lunch, then?”
While he handles her, I get Daisy back on her leash, then follow the orderly out of the room when he gives me the nod.
“She thought I was her husband,” I tell him, by way of an
explanation.
The orderly grins and shakes his head. “Nah, brother. That old lady’s mind is sharp as a tack. She’s just trying to get a little frisky with the new guy. She pulls this stunt on all the handsome ones.” Guffawing, he gives me a slap on the shoulder. “And she’s not the only one. My advice: Trust no one.”
Nursing homes are fucked up.
When Elaine finally returns after abandoning me to the wilds, she shows little sympathy for my ordeal.
Comes with the territory
seems to be her attitude; the staff has apparently resigned themselves to the lawlessness. The inmates are running the asylum.
Elaine eventually brings me to a Korean War helicopter pilot named Lloyd. His room is decorated in about a dozen old photographs of him in his helmet and jumpsuit. When we enter, he’s in bed grumbling at the newspaper, which he reads with a magnifying glass on an arm attached to the bedside table.
“Lloyd,” she says, “this young man would like to spend some time with you, if that’s alright.”
“Doesn’t anyone edit these damn papers anymore? There are two spelling errors on this page alone. When did the newspaper start looking like some lazy kid’s homework?” He lifts his gaze only long enough to spot Daisy standing at my side. “Get that thing out of here,” he snaps. “I’m allergic.”
“You’re not allergic to dogs, Lloyd,” Elaine tells him with a cadence that suggests this isn’t the first argument they’ve had. “And Daisy is very sweet. I’m sure you two will have a lovely time.”
Lloyd huffs and returns to inspecting his newspaper while Elaine leaves me with another pat on the back. It’s like some weird handshake, everyone who works here warning me now that I’ve entered, I can never leave.
“He’s harmless,” she murmurs from the doorway. “Talk to him about Jessie. He loves
to talk about the bird.”
“The bird” is a little yellow thing I hadn’t noticed in a cage by the window. Elaine ducks into the hallway, leaving me trapped in a tiny room with a crotchety old man who glares at me.
I notice another photo on his wall, and move closer to inspect it. “You met Buddy Holly?”
“What?” Lloyd squints toward the photograph of him and the musician outside a venue, posing beside a bus parked in an alley. “Yes, I knew Charles. Back when music meant something.”
“You were friends?”
Daisy, apparently afraid of him, lies on the floor at the foot of the bed.
“I was a roadie. Hauled his gear, that sort of thing.” With another huff, Lloyd loudly folds his paper and sets it aside. “Was getting on a train in New York after I got back from Korea when I saw this skinny kid who could barely lift his guitar and all these bags and cases. I offered him a hand.”
Lloyd seems to warm up a bit, albeit reluctantly. He talks about traveling the country with Holly, Elvis Presley, and Johnny Cash. Running from the cops and unruly fans. Catching flat tires and getting robbed in the middle of nowhere, at a time before calling AAA from the side of the road was a thing. Lugging guitar amps ten miles on foot to the nearest gas station. Turns out Lloyd’s got plenty to say, if I just shut up and let him talk. And in all honesty, I’m enjoying listening to his crazy anecdotes. This guy’s
lived
.
Things are going well—he hasn’t once asked me to bathe him or called me Sheila—until he asks me to feed his bird and put fresh water in the cage. When I open it up, the bird flies out, which doesn’t seem to concern Lloyd at first.
But we both realize too late there’s a puppy in the room, and she’s been bored silly all afternoon.
Like a slow-motion crash, the parakeet flits over to the dresser. Daisy’s ears perk up. She lifts her head, a low
growl building in the back of her throat. Alarmed, the bird takes flight. Daisy pounces, snatching the tiny creature out of the air as it explodes in a burst of yellow feathers and disappears.
Goodbye Jessie.