Perpetual Care

Mabel checked the liver spots on her hands and then looked down at her legs.

“Charlotte, look at my veins. They're near popping out of my leg. Maybe I should buy those support hose.”

“Why,” Charlotte asked, “do you always change the subject when we're discussing something important like death?”

“I'll tell you why, but you probably won't listen.”

Mabel stood up, straightened her cotton dress and walked across the kitchen to Charlotte’s refrigerator. A large faded heart decorated with a few pieces of dried corn and noodles was held to the door with a magnet. She opened the door and noticed a black dirt line where the rubber touched the enamel.

She and Charlotte had known each other for sixty years. Years ago they had discussed croup and remedies for the itchiness of chickenpox. Mabel spelled Charlotte when her youngest fell off a jungle gym and broke both legs. When Mabel’s mother and father died the same year it was Charlotte who brought over casseroles for two weeks and a fresh jello salad every other day. There was Max’s illness and his lingering until he finally died. Mabel never told anyone but Charlotte about her sex life.

“We haven't done it in twenty-two years next August,” she said when Max got sick.

“Mabel, stop sightseeing in the refrigerator and come sit down so we can finish our talk. It’s too hot for coffee. I'll bring you a tall glass of iced tea. Do you like the glasses? I bought them for sixty-nine cents each at the grocery — week two.”

Charlotte considered aging a process that she entered armed with true knowledge. She exercised every day, had cut down on fat years ago, and read Dr. Berman's Advice to the Aging in the Thursday paper. Sometimes she got her days mixed up. Thursday seemed to appear at the wrong place in the week, but then she'd repeat a day. Mabel knew Charlotte always went shopping on Wednesday because the stores gave a Senior Citizen Discount. At first she reminded her on Tuesdays, but recently she had also reminded her on Wednesday mornings.

The two women each carried a sixteen-ounce glass of ice tea to the Formica kitchen table. Mabel opened the cabinet door above the stove and took out a box of cookies. She looked at the date— a week old.

"So what do you want to talk about?"

"Let's plan our burials," said Charlotte.

Charlotte took out a pad of yellow paper. Years ago she worked for a group of lawyers as a paralegal. Every time she wrote on yellow-lined paper she recalled the door with all their names: Bernstein, Sherman, Callahan and Smoot. When she’d married Alex Smoot she had stopped working. She exchanged legal pads for mattress pads and table pads under white tablecloths. Alex had died seven years ago. He fell asleep and forgot to get up. He had never believed in funerals, so Charlotte kept Alex in his urn on the shelf of a bookcase.

Now Charlotte drew a line down the middle of the yellow sheet. With careful penmanship, being mindful of the way she connected the s and the c, she wrote scenery.

“ I think,” Mabel said, “I must be able to overlook moving water. Write down moving stream on my side.”

She sat back and let her mind wander back to a stream in North Carolina. She had walked on flat rocks to the middle and sat when she found a miniature waterfall. Cupfuls of water tumbled over a rock shaped like a turtle's back; it bubbled over her toes and around her fingers.

“Add bubbling to the moving stream,” Mabel said.

“My water,” said Charlotte, “will be dotted with lily pads or lotus pods. I never could tell the difference. I'll add some pickerelweeds on the edges.”

Mabel rubbed her knees trying to loosen them up — shake them out of their inertia. Whenever she sat for too long now, her body took time to respond to her wants. She wanted to follow that path behind the stream until it arrived at the top of the mountain. They called it Lookout Mountain.

Charlotte sketched a pond with lily pads. Years ago she learned to draw the pad so that it sat in the water rather than float in the air.

“I'll add a few ducks, just mallards.”

Every summer Charlotte and Alex had rented a cabin near a lake. They'd bought a wooden rowboat when Jacob turned eight, a canoe when Sammy learned to swim, and a kayak for Charlotte's thirtieth birthday. Charlotte had taken that kayak flat across the lake every morning, before she set out breakfast. She had watched dragonflies dive across the water; practiced her loon call, followed the bend to where the lilies grew. It took her a few seconds to return to her kitchen. Now only Mabel sat at the maple table.


“ I want a stone big enough to write on—not some small brick- sized slab flush with the earth. Charlotte, did you ever do any grave rubbings? I once did some in a small cemetery in New York State. People's slabs just jutted out all over a small hillside. Each stone said something else. One man buried his two hunting dogs on either side of his wife and then had himself laid to rest at her feet.”

“Mabel, they don't do stones that way anymore.”


Two years ago a salesman had visited Charlotte to help her make pre-need arrangements. His company advertised in the yellow pages and Charlotte called to ask about their garden sites and monuments. He showed up early and carried a large black briefcase and wore a dark suit and a dark tie.

“How are you?” he asked when he extended his hand. Charlotte didn't like him from the beginning, but she did look at his book of sites and listened.

“Why let others make a choice for you? They could, in their grief, select a shaded spot or a wet spot. People don't like to visit when the site is morbid.”

He left finally after explaining about a pre-payment plan— “It's like paying off a car, or a mortgage, and once you pay your down payment you're welcome to come visit your spot. If you plan to come often you can purchase a stone bench. After your death the bench will be engraved in your memory. If you plan to have many visitors we suggest a bench with a back.”

Before Mabel and Charlotte became any more involved in stones, the phone rang. Mrs. Genote, 2D, reminded them of the tenant’s meeting.

“I’m bringing a coffee cake to the meeting. So what do you think? Tennie wants the Marshs to help repair her bathroom ceiling. She says they forget to turn the bath water off in time.”

Too much happens during the summer to think about stones and death. There's the sun and flowers. Every afternoon the two good friends walked around the neighborhood checking on gardens and window boxes. Mabel planted seeds in containers in the spring and raised flowers all summer.

It wasn’t until the middle of September that Charlotte and Mabel even returned to thoughts about their burials and that’s because the flowers seemed less alive. It coincided with an ad in the paper. Mabel and Charlotte visited the Gorkian Brothers Monument Company one fall day. The brothers, Gregory and Anthony, had advertised two stones for the price of one in the Sunday paper. It was a one- day sale, no returns. Gorkian held the stones until you needed them and then delivered them for free— within a fifty- mile radius. Mabel wanted hand lettering on a hand- chiseled stone with a cherub at the top. Charlotte wanted the stone shaped like the Washington Monument. In order to take advantage of the sale though, both stones needed to be alike.

Gregory, the older of the two brothers usually dealt with the women clients. He looked like everyone’s son or grandson depending on the purchaser’s age.

He ushered Mabel and Charlotte into a foyer aware that this sale could be easily lost.

"Keep an open mind ladies. You don't need to rush. I'd like you to look through our album of memorable stones. Perhaps there is one that is a compromise."

Mabel remembered the stones in the old cemetery. Half of them leaned over — aging stones just like her. She didn't care if nowadays people didn't put cherubs on stones.

"Why Charlotte, if we don't put something nice on the stones nobody will want to rub them one hundred years from now."

"And why might you want someone draping you with rice paper and pressing down on the stone with a black crayon? Seems to me the grave rubbers rub away the names and dates until no reasonable person could tell the name, unless they knew who was under that stone."

Neither Mabel nor Charlotte found anything they liked in the Gorkian album of memorable stones.

"Too plain," said Mabel.

"Too squat," said Charlotte.

They walked four blocks to the bus stop and then decided to take advantage of the crisp fall air and walked to the next stop.

"You're going too fast," said Mabel, "my legs ache.”

"Why don't you wear support hose?"

Mabel didn't answer and Charlotte did not say another word for the rest of the walk. Usually she pointed out the movie at the Paladium Theatre on the corner of Trefnor and Stellas. Mabel always mentioned that those streets were named after Cliff Trefnor and Anthony Stellas who both died in 1943 and who both grew up in her neighborhood.

The wait for the bus seemed to take forever and their silence added weight to the day. Over the years they had fought and had the usual disagreements, but always smoothed out all the wrinkles. Once they didn't speak to each other for three months after an argument over a recipe. When they tried to recall later why it happened, Mabel couldn't remember what started it all off, but knew that she had cried from loneliness. Max, her husband, had surrounded herself with cigar smoke and newspapers.

"Did you know," he had said, "that twenty-four people became sick when they ate the appetizers at the Frizner’s wedding reception. It’s in the paper." Max believed in the infallibility of the newspaper. When he died Mabel wrote a long obit for the papers; it listed everything about Max.

Charlotte didn't care about what newspapers said or reported. In fact, after working as a paralegal for three years she suspected all facts.

"Facts," she said, "are there for the twisting and distorting. Someone slips and bruises their knee and the next thing you know they say their career in baseball is finished. And it doesn't matter if they never played stick ball— their career has been cut short before it began."

The varicose veins puffed up the longer Mabel waited for the bus. Large purple tributaries traveled around her ankles. Charlotte's legs, despite carrying her around for eighty-two years, still looked trim and younger than her age. Mabel had been jealous of those legs for thirty years, but Mabel’s hair was still looked dark brown— not even streaked with gray, while Charlotte's hair had been dyed for almost thirty- four years. On windy days it didn't matter if the outside was dark brown, because the wind exposed the white roots and pink scalp.

Charlotte stared ahead. If you watch a pot and wait for it to boil it takes its time, the same with waiting for a bus. She looked at her digital watch, a present from her son Jacob. It costs too much to travel across from one side of the country to the other side so she didn't often get to see Jacob. Sammy, her youngest son, had died forty-three years ago.

"What are you going to do? Train for a marathon?" Mabel had asked when Charlotte showed her the watch. Mabel's son Matthew lived across the ocean and sent her airmail letters; her other son John, called once a month.

Two more people queued up behind the women. One, an older woman, wore a green cardigan over a gray pullover sweater. Her dark brown stockings did not cover the bulging varicose veins on her right foot. Every time she moved the veins became snakes writhing beneath the tight nylons. Mabel wondered whether her own vein looked the same or if they hadn't reached that point.

"How long until the bus comes?" the woman asked.

She tried again, "How long you been waiting?"

Mabel did not want to be the first to speak, to break the silence. How often she thought has it been me. I'm the one who always makes it right.

"i''m interrupting something. It isn't important to know how long you've been waiting. Usually I don’t interfere. Everybody's got troubles. Maybe you could just hold up some fingers."

Charlotte held up ten fingers and then rethought and opened and closed her hand to reveal ten fingers, ten fingers, ten fingers over and over.

Even when the line grew to six people the silence remained; only when they boarded the bus did the voices of those on the bus break the silence and release the others. Mabel said, "excuse me" to people as she moved to the middle of the bus and waited until someone got up and gave her a seat. Charlotte answered someone who asked, "Do you have the time?"

The old woman who wore two sweaters picked up a folded newspaper and began to read an article. Her lips moved and the people close to her could hear her read the baseball scores.It took ten minutes to reach their neighborhood. Ten minutes before they got out and walked to the apartment house where they both lived. They usually went to the Silver Bell for dinner on Friday, and this was Friday.

Charlotte wanted to ask Mabel about the stone. She wanted to know why Mabel made it so difficult to compromise. Didn't she want a stone people could spot as soon as they entered a cemetery— a tall one, pointed at the top— elegant? Instead of asking, Charlotte took the elevator to the fourth floor and went into her apartment. Everything looked neat, even the pile of magazines on the checkerboard table. Alex loved chess. He taught her to play and later on he taught Jacob and Sammy. Although she loved the boys she always wanted a daughter.

"A daughter,"she said aloud, "I could call and talk to a daughter, but a son is different. I could ask a daughter what to do about the gravestone." Dinnertime approached and neither woman called— no one set a time for dinner.


For years Mabel had smoothed over quarrels. Charlotte waited for Mabel to call. She told herself that Mabel liked to think of herself as a peacemaker. When several tenants had wanted to ban dogs from the building because a spaniel had peed in the elevator, Mabel came up with an acceptable solution. At first everyone yelled at the tenant meeting. Mr. Bozman, in 3C , spoke about a german shepherd who barked late at night and how he even thought of poisoning the dog. The lady in 4C screamed fascist. Mabel, with the Wisdom of Solomon, suggested that little dogs must be held while in the elevator. Big dogs and their owners must walk upstairs.

"Usually," said Mabel, "dogs won't stop on the stairs to pee." No one contradicted her. The measure passed when someone amended it to read that all dogs, regardless of size, must be carried if they were to use the elevator.

But now Mabel’s silence was deafening. By eight o'clock Charlotte opened the refrigerator to make herself a cheese and tomato sandwich. In her own apartment Mabel opened a can of soup, poured it into a pan, warmed it and then let half of it sit in her bowl— getting cold.

She waited for the phone to ring.

Wednesday morning Mabel reminded herself of Senior Citizen's Discount day at the stores. Just a call, she thought, just a reminder. But once she called, Charlotte asked so many questions that Mabel couldn't stop herself when she said, "So, let's go for a walk while there is still some warmth." After all, it was Charlotte who kept the conversation going with all those questions.
The two friends walked for blocks before Charlotte suggested they stop for a cup of coffee and a muffin - she wanted Mabel to get off her feet before her legs started aching. They both ordered black coffee and split a cranberry / apple muffin.

"I have a question for you," said Charlotte. "I can't be buried with Alex since he's on the shelf, but how about you and Max?"

"All those years we spent our lives in the same rooms. Once a year I go to the cemetery and place a stone on his grave- that's enough." Mabel answered. "You think," she added "a tall stone, higher than the rest is going to make people come and talk?"

"And who is going to pay attention to old- fashioned cherubs? People rub old stones; they want to capture history."

Charlotte cut the muffin in half. "You pick." she said. How often she had heard Sammy say that. He died too early, before you ever should think about burials.First they told her he was missing and then they confirmed his death. Charlotte remembered how Alex cried when they lowered Sammy's coffin into the dark earth. The coffin had been closed when he returned in the womb of a plane.

"I'll take the piece on the right."

"You know, Mabel, it isn't being morbid to think about how you want to be buried. It just comes up upon you and then there is no choice. This way you pay ahead and make it easier for everybody. It's just good planning. Everybody's scattered."

"Charlotte, do you talk to Max?"

"At night I tell him what I did during the day— just the way I did when he sat opposite me at dinner."

Charlotte and Mabel talked beyond their coffee cup refills and two muffins; they talked all the way home to the apartment house. They laughed when they sat down at Mabel's kitchen table. Mabel's question churned around in Charlotte's mind. She thought of Alex in his urn and the easy visits she and Alex enjoyed at the end of the day. Everyone in her family lived far away.

"I can't imagine anyone coming to visit my grave," she said to herself and to Mabel. "Except for the perpetual care people, no one would talk to me-no one would share their day. And I can't imagine Jacob keeping me on a shelf. He'd probably bury the urn or sprinkle me on a lake."

Neither could Mabel imagine her children placing her carefully on a shelf and conversing, but if she stayed in the house they might.

"It really," said Charlotte, "is all about how to make sure we end up on a shelf instead of in the ground. I like visitors."

Just before the sun went down, Mabel asked Charlotte about her will. And Charlotte asked Mabel about her will. Both women inherited all the money and they would upon their deaths pass it along. Max and Alex had both saved and invested and all of them had practiced a fairly frugal lifestyle. Charlotte and Mabel might be called comfortable.Perhaps Mabel started the thought, but certainly Charlotte finished the thought.

"I'll call the lawyer and setup appointments to discuss our wills," said Mabel.

"We can be cremated and will our family the urn," said Charlotte.

"They can turn around and bury the urn in a niche. I've seen those advertised— a sunny niche for urns. You can't make someone keep the urn of their mother in the house." said Mabel.

"A lawyer can." said Charlotte
.
Charlotte laughed when she thought of the will being read. This urn containing Charlotte's ashes will spend an equal amount of time in the aforementioned relatives houses. In order to be eligible for the yearly amount of aforementioned money, the urn shall be placed on a shelf in a location where the family gathers. If possible the placement of the urn should be in a sunny spot. The executor of the will shall attest to these wishes being carried out properly. A wood crate shall be built to allow for the safe delivery from one relative's house to the house of another relative. Failure to abide by this will result in forfeiture of one's inheritance.

"Tomorrow," said Mabel, "after we set up the lawyer's appointment let's call around and find out about urns. I want to design my own."

Charlotte finally recalled what she wanted to ask Mabel. Sometimes, if she just let her mind alone it came up with what she needed. "Remember," she started, "when I said to you that you always changed the subject when I talked about death. Well you said you'd tell me why, but I probably wouldn't listen. I've been listening, off and on, to you for sixty years.”

For a few seconds the only sound in the apartment came from the drippy bathroom faucet. Mabel sighed, stood up and walked behind Charlotte's chair, stooped down and wrapped her arms around Charlotte. Charlotte leaned back and rested her head on Mabel's breast.

Mabel rocked back and forth while her hands stroked Charlotte's hair and face. She loved the weight of Charlotte's head against her breast.

"Charlotte, I've loved you for sixty years."

And what I really want, she said to herself, is for us to be buried side by side.

Linda Watskin ©2011

Hot Water and Lemon at the Food Court

I put down the cafeteria tray with my wrapped chicken salad sandwich and then opened the newspaper so I could read and eat.

“I 'll join you,” is all she said.

It isn't as if I had a chance to say yes or no. Her glass of hot water with a lemon edged onto the top took up little space. When she sat down across from me I no longer could see the Dunkin Donuts display case.

“I come here often,” she said. “The lemons are always fresh.”

“Do you like tea?” was all I managed to respond.

Florescent lights hard edged the tables and floor. Even the shadows fell off at disturbing angles. The light added a few tones to her grey hair. When she sat down her body collapsed upon itself; her shoulders curled forward and her feet held the ground solidly with the full weight of her body supported by black tie shoes. I had noted the shoes with their square heels and and worn edges. A protruding spot to the right of her big toe probably meant a bunion.

“No, I don't like tea. Maybe I'd like tea if they served the kind they got in metal tins you see in Macys.”

“I'm not a tea drinker,” I said while I unwrapped my sandwich of its double layer of plastic.

The top slice of seven grain bread bulged and the bottom slice had a soft spot- probably the result of a concentration of mayonnaise. A piece of lettuce, molded to the top of the chicken salad, had brown edges so I took it out.

“You don't like lettuce?”

“No, it has brown on the edges and looks tired,” I responded—immediately sorry that I had felt the need to give an explanation. I always explained too much.

She squeezed all the juice out of the lemon, pulled the pointed ends down so the white skin faced up and ate the skin off the rind before placing the rind on my brown tray.

“Me neither,” she said and then added, “I never eat tired food.”

A man wearing a heavy twill jacket, sat at the table to my left He pushed his cup of coffee to the farthest point on the table and took out a black bible.

My chicken salad sandwich didn't look any better with its wrapper off.

“I seen you looking at the preacher,” she said and she drank some of her hot water.

“I seen you looking at the preacher so he don't know you're looking at him.”

I stopped staring and tried to catch an occasional side-glance at the man she called the preacher. He mumbled and turned pages.

“Yesterday he gave a sermon on giving," she said as she leaned across the table and touched the middle of my sandwich.

“Got to be careful of bones in chicken salad. I heard once about someone died on a piece of wishbone.”

I didn't want to eat the part of the sandwich she touched. If I ate the sandwich I'd worry all night about germs.

“Do you want a piece of this sandwich?” I asked.

Just then the preacher stood up, spun around, and addressed us as if we were his congregation.

“You people don't give the way the Lord intended. Have you given to provide facilities for the old and the children who haven't learned control yet?”

Jesus, I thought, first this women sits at my table, pokes my sandwich and now I listen to this.

“What kind of bread you got on that sandwich?” she asked.

“It's seven grain.”

She thought and then leaned across the table and tore one half of the sandwich in half.

“Want some hot water?” she asked.

“No.”

The other half of the sandwich hadn't been touched so I proceeded to eat it. Using the back end of her spoon she cut her quarter into small pieces.

She looked at me and said, “Don't you think it's kind of dainty this way? Now if I had a teabag from one of those metal boxes they sell at Macys.”

The preacher walked over to our table, looked through me while asking me to give money to set-up outdoor facilities. When I took out a dollar and handed it to him he said, “Where do you wash-up? Does the Lord provide you with a place ? Oh, Lord, these people have lost the way since you been gone so long."

“I'm Zeporah,” the woman at the table spoke breaking into my scattered thoughts of religion. Chose that name because it's the end. You don't need to do it all over again. You don't go back to A. Do you have a name?”

Why should I tell her my name? She was a woman who obviously didn't belong anywhere, didn't have a sense of social grace and simply poked at my sandwich.

“Carla,” I said.

“You got to go through many more names before you get to the end. Pretty crooked streets ahead and the rain falls too loud, so loud you get scared and need to hide. If they had outdoor facilities like the preacher say it be easier. I been working a long time.”

Maybe if I gave her money she'd leave and I could reclaim the table.
Two men walked by carrying chairs, put them down in front of the Mexican Grill and went for more chairs. I moved my chair so I could see what was happening.

“Why you so interested in them?” she said.

“Maybe,’ she continued, “you think I come here because I don't have no where to go, maybe you right and maybe you wrong. Besides I got a daughter I'm waiting for. She's meeting me here for hot water and lemon.”

I remembered back to the last time I spoke to my daughter, the last time I heard her voice. I thought it must be eight years. The reasons she stopped talking to me were never clear. Maybe the divorce, maybe the lifestyle—maybe we weren't the right fit. Maybe I'll have to work my way from Carla. It had taken me some time to realize that my daughter stopped talking to me. She closed the door so tightly that not even a breath could get through.

“You got a daughter?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, “I'm meeting her for dinner tonight. She loves Italian food and we're trying a new place.”

Linda Watskin ©2011