Flee, Fly, Flown

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Hepburn, Janet

  Flee, fly, flown [electronic resource] / Janet Hepburn.

  Electronic monograph in EPUB format.

  Issued also in print format.

  ISBN 978-1-927583-04-3

  I. Title.

  PS8615.E67F54 2013 C813’.6 C2012-908174-4

  Copyright © 2013 by Janet Hepburn

  Edited by Kathryn Cole

  Cover: Illustration © Greg Stevenson/www.i2iart.com

  Design by Melissa Kaita

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Second Story Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario

  Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing

  program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government

  of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

  Published by

  Second Story Press

  20 Maud Street, Suite 401

  Toronto, ON M5V 2M5

  www.secondstorypress.ca

  For my mother

  Anna Mary Greenslade, 1921–2011,

  paragon of extraordinary strength and courage

  through a decade spent living with Alzheimer’s

  Part I

  FLEE

  The Nursing Home

  1

  I slide my plate to the center of the table, put down my fork, and lean toward Audrey. “I can’t eat one more bite of this tasteless mush. I need giant chunks of toffee.”

  Audrey continues to eat as if I’m not here.

  “Audrey?” I tap her arm to get her attention.

  She raises only her eyes in my direction. “What did you say?”

  “Good grief,” I mumble under my breath, “where is that damn waiter, anyway?” Then loudly to Audrey, “I said I’m gonna move out, pull up stakes, hit the road if I don’t get something decent to eat soon.”

  She pushes the food around on her plate; selects the perfect combination of colors on her fork—white, orange, green—all tinged gray from too much time in the warming trays. “You always say that, but you’re still here,” she says. “Where would you go?”

  I gaze around the room at all the faces and surroundings, familiar now but not always. “I want to go home.”

  The dining room is filled with gray-haired women and a spattering of balding men. The space between tables is cluttered with wheelchairs and walkers. Pastel uniforms with white sneakers perch on stools, spooning food into random open mouths like mother birds feeding their young. They write on clipboards, recording how much we eat, how much we leave behind. At least that’s what they say. Maybe they’re writing stories or letters to their sisters, or maybe they’re drawing funny pictures of us to laugh at with their friends.

  A mint-green uniform stops at our table and takes away my untouched dinner. She sets a bowl of Jell-O in front of me. “There you go,” she says.

  There I go, indeed. These rubbery cubes are about the last thing I want, but I’ve learned the right response; “Thank you, Dear.”

  A shiver trickles down my back. I wrap my sweater tighter around my shoulders and watch as Audrey tries to eat her pudding with a fork.

  “Are you cold?” the uniform asks. “It’s August and it’s hot out there. You’re lucky to be in here with the air conditioning.”

  She makes a fanning gesture with her hand and walks away.

  I stare at the neon-orange Jell-O and sip my tea. “Audrey!” I holler to make myself heard. “It’s August. Do you know what that means?”

  Audrey looks at me with a puzzled expression. “I know what August is. What are you getting at?”

  “We need to get out of here—go on a vacation.

  It’s August so we should go soon, before it turns cool. Would you go with me?”

  Audrey brightens. “Yes.”

  The woman across the table drops her plate and it clatters across the floor. Audrey tries to push it back to her using the tip of her cane.

  My mind is humming. “We should drive.” I keep talking, a plan splatting from my lips, surprising me as much as it does Audrey. “Do you have a car?”

  “Do I hafflegar?” Audrey asks.

  “Good Lord! You need new batteries in your hearing aid. A car. Do you have a car?”

  “No, I don’t think so.” She pauses, looking around the room. “No. I sold my car to the boy who lives next door. Nice young man. He was just learning to drive.”

  “Carol and Tom sold my car too, along with my house and everything else I owned.” I can feel my voice rising and my shoulders tightening. “I’m sure they stole all my money too. That’s why they don’t visit. They keep telling me they’re looking after my money for me. Bullshit!” I take a deep breath like the uniforms always tell me to. “Think about something else,” they say. “Think about nice things.”

  “Albert would never have let this happen. He would have sat those kids down and given them a stern talking-to. They listened to him too, much more than to me.”

  Audrey heaves herself up with the help of her cane. She’s shorter and rounder than I am, and wobbly on her right leg, but she gets around pretty well with her walking stick. And she is sweet—like Fraise, my aunt. I couldn’t have made it growing up without Fraise. I think about her all the time and how she took care of me when my mother couldn’t be bothered.

  Audrey hobbles over to me and rubs my back. “It’s okay, Hon. We don’t need them. We’ll figure out a way.”

  I wipe my eyes with my sleeve and pull a pen from my sweater pocket. On a napkin, I scribble the word vacation. Twice. I tear the napkin in two and give one piece to Audrey. I fold the other and place it carefully in my pocket beside the pen. “So we don’t forget,” I say. “This is important.”

  It’s morning and on my way to the dining room for breakfast, I spot Audrey sitting on her bed, rifling through a leather purse the size of a full-grown cat. She looks up and waves.

  “Come in here for a minute. Sit down.” She continues to pull things out of the various pockets and compartments in the purse and lay them on the bed beside the napkin with the one-word reminder, vacation.

  “Aaahaa!”

  She pulls a set of keys from one of the zippered pockets and jangles them in my direction. “I think that one of these is the extra key to my car. I found this purse stuck in the back of my closet and look what was hiding inside!” She holds the keys in one hand and reaches over to pick up the napkin with the other.

  “What luck,” I say, cupping one hand around the keys and shaking her hand with the other.

  Audrey gathers the items from the bed to put them back in the leather cat. Her face lights up again. “And look what else I found.” She pulls a wad of bills from a clear plastic change purse tucked in the bottom of the bag. “Ta-da!”

  “You are really something!” I tell her. “Now we have a car and money. I’m sure I’ll remember how to drive once I’m behind the wheel.”

  A pair of men’s shoes and pant legs appear around the edge of the doorway followed in short bursts by a wheelchair carrying a plump, gray-haired man with a pasty complexion. The man looks at me for some time before he speaks.

  “I’m Harry,” he says in a low, scratchy voice.

  “Hello, Harry. We know who you are.”

  He focuses more closely on our faces. “What are

  you doing?”

  “Talking about women’s problems—you know—arm flab, whiskers, vaginal dryness. Do you mind? It’s kind of persona
l,” I say, looking him straight in the eye.

  Harry spins around with new agility and wheels away quicker than a young pup caught piddling on the rug.

  Audrey stifles a laugh. “Pervert! That was fast thinking!”

  I laugh. “I don’t know where the dryness came from.

  I can’t remember the last time I worried about that.”

  Breakfast is over. Porridge, toast, scrambled eggs. Who can eat that much of the same thing, day after day? Audrey taps her cane on the floor and stands up. “Let’s go play some bingo.”

  At the elevators, we push the button and wait.

  “Where are you going Lillian? Audrey?” someone asks from the nearby desk.

  “Downstairs to bingo.”

  As the elevator door opens, an alarm starts to chime. Inside, we push buttons but the door stays open. The chime persists.

  A uniform rises from her chair behind the desk and joins us. “No one leaves the floor without a staff member.” She enters a code on the keypad. “We don’t want anyone wandering off, do we?”

  The door closes and we drop. My stomach does a loop-de-loop.

  “Why does the elevator work for you but not for us?” I ask.

  Her glance darts toward my wrist, then back up to meet my eye. “It’s magic. The elevator just knows when there’s someone in it that isn’t supposed to leave the floor.”

  “We’re old and sometimes forgetful. That doesn’t mean we’ve totally lost our grip on reality,” I say. “No need to be conde…hensive.”

  The elevator opens onto a large room filled with chairs and tables and more gray hair. The uniform holds the door and waves until she gets the attention of the bingo-caller. Everyone stops and stares, some at us and some just gazing into space, as we find seats and wait for our bingo cards and dabbers. I touch my wrist and feel the familiar bracelet. It says SafeChip on the band. Around the room, I’m surprised to see that each person wears the same thing. The blue squares and white bands are so conspicuous that I wonder why I haven’t noticed them before.

  A tall man wearing a ridiculous looking blue pinny that says “Volunteers are the heart of good healthcare” (the word heart replaced with a huge red valentine shape), leans over and tapes a bingo card to the table.

  “Tell me something,” I say quietly. I point to the wristband. “Does this thing make the alarm go off in the elevator?”

  He looks surprised at the question. “You’re very bright.” He hands me a dabber and moves off toward Audrey.

  I’m sitting in a chair near the elevators, watching visitors come and go. Uniforms travel up and down from floor to floor and the alarms don’t sound. Finally, when no one is around, I push the button and stand close to the door as it opens. There it is—bing, bing, bing. I hurry away and wander the halls until

  I find Audrey, standing beside the aquarium, watching the fish.

  I hold out my arm so Audrey can see. “We need to chuck these bracelets.”

  She looks confused. “I’m not sure.” She touches the one on her own arm. “I’ve got one too. Is it some sort of watch?”

  “We need to get rid of them,” I tell her, my voice growing louder. “They set off the alarm in the elevator. We’ll never be able to sneak out as long as we’re wearing these.” Sometimes Audrey just doesn’t get it.

  “What do you mean, sneak out?”

  I reach into my sweater pocket, take out the napkin, and hold it up for Audrey to read.

  “Oh! Of course.” She takes hold of her wristband and pulls. She scrunches her hand up as narrow as she can and tries to work the bracelet off. It doesn’t budge. “We need scissors.”

  I nod. “Exactly.” I look around the room. “They never let us have anything shiny. We’ll have to steal them.”

  Audrey looks puzzled. “Shiny?”

  “You know—to cut with—shiny.” A spasm of pain in my back leaves me suddenly weak. “I need to sit down.”

  We join some other women in the comfortable chairs clustered in front of the television. Some are dozing, others stare at the dark screen. Soon Audrey and I are doing the same.

  “Do you want the TV on?” a blue-pinnyed woman asks as she walks through the room.

  No one responds.

  The room suddenly fills with color and sound. The blue pinny puts down the switcher-thing and continues on her way.

  Noise and nonsense is all I hear. The characters on the screen look like clowns, their movements exaggerated. They talk too fast. It hurts my eyes and ears.

  I walk a lot. I’m free when I’m walking around and around the loop of hallway that joins all of our rooms. I don’t need to ask permission or ask for help. I’m on my own. On the second time around the loop, I spot my quilt in one of the rooms. It’s purple and green and no one else has one like it, thank God. People always get mad when I lie on their beds by mistake. I go in and stretch out on my quilt, almost paralyzed by the pain stabbing through my back. I roll onto my side, and after a moment, I’m surprised to find a warm, wet spot on my pillow just beneath my cheek. Tears. It seems I’m leaking from everywhere these days.

  I slept poorly last night, but this morning I’m wide awake, dying for a cup of hot coffee, wishing I could drink it from a pottery mug instead of the thermal plastic cup with the sippy lid. I look around for my table—the one assigned to me.

  A woman waves—Eleanor, I think. She doesn’t speak English. For all I know, she could be swearing at me. She pats the seat beside her, inviting me to sit, then lets loose in long, expressive streams of words, waving her hands and smoothing her skirt over the dark woolen stockings she wears, even through the summer. Another woman sits on the other side, a little thing with frizzy, bleached hair and crooked teeth. And Audrey is here.

  I’m drawn to Audrey more than the others at Tranquil Meadows Nursing Home. We came to live here around the same time, though heaven knows when that was. Days and months are no longer distinguishable, one from the other, in this place. The chalkboard behind the workers’ station declares it is Saturday, August 5.

  During breakfast, the woman in charge of keeping us busy with silly games and repetitive singsongs—I’ve forgotten her name—zigzags between the tables, inviting each person to come to the recreation room to make “late summer bouquets from fabric and pipe cleaners and seed pods.”

  I finger the crumpled bit of napkin in my pocket. “Audrey,” I say.

  Audrey looks up and smiles. “New batteries,” she says, pointing at her hearing aid.

  “Great! There’s a craft class this morning.”

  Audrey looks back at her bowl and scoops a spoonful of oatmeal into her mouth. She swallows and says, “I don’t feel like it today.”

  I reach over and point at the wristband on her arm. “It’s a craft class. There’ll be scissors.”

  “Scissors?” She stares blankly at her wristband.

  “To cut these off,” I remind her. “To cut our way to freedom. You need to focus. Try to remember the plan at all times.”

  The activities lady is still talking. “You can go back to your rooms and get ready. We’ll come and pick you up in half an hour to take you downstairs,” she announces to anyone who will listen.

  Audrey rises and nods at me. “See you down there then?”

  “Definitely. I wouldn’t miss the making of late summer bouffants for anything.” I march down the hall in search

  of my room.

  I open all the drawers in my cupboard and move things around. My toothbrush is gone. I finally find it stored along with some toothpaste in a small drawer in the bathroom. How did it get there? This must be a new drawer. I find my comb in the same place, soak it under running water, and rake it through my hair. A quick look in the mirror, then

  I turn and open the door.

  A middle-aged woman stands in my room, dark brown
hair pulled back in a clip and narrow glasses in shades of brown and yellow perched on her nose. “Mother—there you are,” she says. The woman strides over, bends down, and wraps her arms around me.

  I feel my body tense. “Carol? What are you doing here?”

  2

  Carol’s smile fades. Her arms fall to her sides. “Nice greeting! Glad to see you too, Mom.”

  I take her hand in both of mine. “I’m sorry, Dear.

  You surprised me, that’s all. I didn’t know you were coming.”

  “Don’t you remember? Last time I visited, we set up this date to go shopping for shoes and some new clothes for you.”

  “We did?” I glance at the clock. I can hear the staff circulating to escort people to the craft room. “Oh dear, I’m afraid I can’t go this morning. Could you come back this afternoon?”

  “No, Mom, I can’t. I need to head back to Toronto by mid-afternoon. I thought we could shop this morning, have a bite to eat, then I’d bring you back here and go. What’s so important that you have to do this morning?”

  I try to come up with a reason that will sound important, but the words just won’t come and I settle on a partial truth. “We’re making late summer bouquets.”

  Carol looks relieved. “Oh, good Lord. Surely you can miss that?”

  “No. No, I can’t. We have to go. It’s mandible.” I sit on the bed and hope someone will come soon to get me.

  Carol sits beside me. “Mom, I’ll talk to the nurse and make sure it’s okay for you to go shopping. You can make bouquets another time. Please? I woke up before dawn to catch a commuter flight from Toronto to Ottawa so I could get here in time. I’ve been looking forward to spending the day with you.” She takes my hand in hers. “Will you come with me?”

  I pull away. Who does she think she is, just showing up here and expecting me to jump? I already have plans.