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Elegy Written in a Connecticut Senior Living Facility
Pat Dixon
1
“If you’re going to be seeing your father soon, Marian, kindly take him his mail. The least the old bastard could do is have the consideration to notify those post office people where to forward it.”
“Wha—? What are you talking about, Mother?”
“His mail, of course—his mail—your father’s mail. I thought I made that totally plain. Weren’t you listening to me—again?”
“Mother—I—it can’t be forwarded to Father. Father is dead.”
“Are you sure? This big envelope, for one thing, is addressed to him in his own handwriting. I should know it after forty-odd years. See?”
“Yes, Mother. I’m sure Father’s dead. He died two months ago, right there in the bathroom of this apartment. He was sitting on the toilet, and suddenly you heard him groan —or whoop or something. You called the—the front desk yourself, and Mr. Babson came right up and did CPR until the fire medics arrived. They almost revived him—twice. Don’t you remember? And you held Father’s hand to comfort him till Mr. Babson got here.”
“I did?”
“Indeed. And just last week we sorted through his clothes and donated them to your new synagogue for their rummage sale next month.”
“Hunh—I thought the ol’ bastard ran off—with that Becky Meyerson—you know her—that floozy that was flirting with anything in pants. I thought he’d left me. Well, this is news. He died, you say?”
“Yes, Mother. And we had a lovely funeral for him. Ten people came down from Storrs special for it, and condolences are still coming in from some of his former students. Three of his friends from Yale even attended the service.”
“Interesting. How could I forget a thing like that, I wonder?”
“Well, maybe—maybe because it was a very stressful time. It was awfully sudden, too. Father’d been to have a physical just two days before, and they told him his EKG looked great and his heart should be good for another—another fifteen or twenty years.”
“Hunh. Well, then tell me if you can, Miss Smarty, how he sent this to himself. It’s postmarked just—just three days ago.”
“Well—it’s—it’s one of these ‘self-addressed stamped envelopes,’ Mother—the sort of thing a person uses when sending out scholarly articles to professional journals—except that after Father retired and you both moved to New Haven, he used this as his address instead UConn’s French Department. Sometimes it takes a scholarly journal six months—or even a year—to go through the process of deciding if they want to publish an article or not. Did you know that he was still sending out research articles, Mother?”
“When we were living in Storrs, he always had them addressed to ‘Mister.’”
“What? What do you mean?”
“‘Mr. David Greenwood.’ Never ‘Dr. David Greenwood.’ All the older professors took pride in using ‘mister.’ I always thought it was reverse snobbism—affected modesty. That was how they asked students to call them.”
“What does it say on this envelope? Doctor?”
“He wrote ‘Prof. David Greenwood.’ Maybe he got over his modesty. That Meyerson slut was always calling him Professor—and grabbing his arm or patting his shoulder—and standing too close when she talked to him. I think he liked being called Professor. He seemed to work it into conversations a lot—like ‘when I was professor of French at the university, X and Y and Z were far better than they are nowadays,’ and he never would say ‘at UConn’ or ‘at the University of Connecticut’ but just ‘the university’—as if he taught at Yale or some such place.”
“Maybe when he was using stationery and envelopes with his academic address preprinted on them he knew that people knew what he was, Mother. After you both moved down here and had to make all new friends from scratch, maybe he felt a little—at loose ends—after thirty-six years of everyone knowing who he was. I think men might be that way sometimes—about their identities—when they retire.”
“Well—you can have this if you want, Marian. I have no interest in early French poetry—or even in recent—or middle—French poetry—or French prose, for that matter. Or French cooking either.”
Marian Poggioli leaned forward and took the large manila envelope which her mother extended toward her. She looked at her father’s somewhat shaky handwriting on the outside, addressing the material to himself with his favorite blue-black ink. In the upper left corner he had also written the name of the journal—The Eye Blink Review—and its academic address—some college in Indiana which she had never heard of. On top of these words, with the help of a rubber stamp, some officious person had redundantly printed the same information in smudged black ink.
Her father’s letters were large and clear, written with his broad-nibbed fountain pen. She smiled slightly, recalling that he had never once permitted himself to use a ballpoint pen, even in restaurants when using a credit card. For a moment she stared at the photograph of her father that was hung on the wall near the kitchenette. He was robust looking, with his large mane of white hair. “Mr. Dandelion-Head” was her nickname for him thirty years ago—invented one morning by himself after showering and blow-drying his hair. The photograph was at least a dozen years old. Marian pictured her father as he had become in the past year—thinner, slower, stiffer, with larger pouches below his eyes, which more and more seemed unfocused or bewildered. Her smile faded, and with a small sigh she slowly tugged open the adhesive flap of the envelope and removed the contents.
Approximately a dozen pages were secured together with a large paper clip. The top sheet was pale green and looked as if it were a fifth- or sixth-generation photocopy of something that had been typed on an old Underwood or Royal manual typewriter—the machines owned by her parents before they married and conceived her and which she had played with for hundreds of hours when she was a small girl. Below the typed name and address of the journal was an undated, unsigned message:
Dear Author—we regret that the high volumn of submissions to THE EYE BLINK REVIEW precludes us from responding with a personal reply. Believe us when we say that our Editorial Staff have given your mss. a VERY careful and thorough reading, and have determined that your submission does not suit our needs now at the present time. Be assured that this does not reflect negatively upon your writing ability or upon the merits of this submission. Very likely it will find itself a good home in some other quality journal! We DO invite you at this time to subscribe to THE EYE BLINK REVIEW so that you will have a clearer ieda as to what our editorial preferences are—AND we strongly encourage you to submit other additional writings of yours to TEBR in the future when you have done this. The lower half of this sheet contains a conveinent form for subscribing for one, tow, or even three years.
With our very best wishes: THE EYE BLINK EDITORIAL STAFF.
Marian glanced up at her mother, who had fallen asleep on the sofa with some piece of open mail on her lap. Sarah Greenwood’s mouth was half open, and she was snoring softly. Marian glanced at the lower half of the greenish sheet of paper and pursed her lips as she read the amounts listed on the subscription form: $18.00 for one year, $35.00 for two years, and $50.00 for three. This might, she thought, explain partly why, about three years ago, her father had begun subscribing to a fairly large array of small literary magazines and journals. She frowned and recalled that once his articles had been eagerly accepted by four or five of the better journals in his field.
Marian Poggioli lifted the green sheet and found that her father’s cover letter, dated more than eight months earlier, had been returned with his submission. Its first paragraph identified his work as a “longish poetic elegy, titled ‘Golden Girl,’” its second paragraph summarized in two sentences his academic career and the nature of his previous publications—four books, forty-three articles, “over 150 book reviews,” and seven poems—and its third paragraph offered to make revisions and/or cuts to accommodate the needs of the journal. Below his signature was a list of the poems published—all of them within the past three years, and all of them in periodicals whose names were unknown to her.
She reflected briefly that her father had never mentioned to her that he had any interest in or talent for writing poems. Further, Marian was fairly certain that he had not mentioned it to her mother, either. She glanced up, saw that her mother was still sleeping with her mouth still open, and turned to the next page. Her father’s full name and home address, phone number, and e-mail address were in the upper left corner of the page, and an estimated word count was in the upper right corner: “Approximately 1800 words.” Halfway down the page was the title, followed by a pair of dates, and then, roughly centered, the poem began.
Sarah Greenwood snorted suddenly, waking herself, and blinked at Marian.
“Did you ask me something?” she said, smiling.
Marian pushed the pages back inside the envelope and wet her upper lip with the tip of her tongue.
“No, Mother. I think I must have coughed or cleared my throat. But if we’re going to go out for seafood tonight, I supposed we’d better go powder our noses now and get our coats on soon. Our reservation is for 6:15, so it would be a good idea to get the show on the road pretty soon—don’t you agree?”
Mrs. Greenwood looked at her watch, then glanced up at her living room clock. Together, they told her it was approximately 4:50 p.m. She nodded in agreement and began struggling to her feet, waving off her daughter’s offer of a helping hand.
While her mother was in the bathroom, Marian tucked the manila envelope down inside her canvas tote bag. “Golden Girl,” she had decided, would get her attention some time after she got back to Willamantic. She took several deep breaths, sucked on her lips, gently bit the lower one from the inside, and then wet them both twice with the tip of her tongue. Rising, she tapped on the bathroom door.
“Mother—I’ll be out on your balcony—enjoying the fresh air for about five minutes.”
“All right dear,” came the muffled reply. “Don’t burn down the building.”
Marian smiled without mirth. She took one of her cigarets and a book of matches from her purse, stepped outside, and shut the door behind her. Five stories below, traffic moved by fits and starts at the intersection. She wondered what her father had thought of this living arrangement after spending most of his life in houses made to hold five or more people. She had never thought to ask him, and he had never commented on it per se, though he had frequently expressed his dismay at the quality of the meals they were served in the dining room and at the annual jumps in the rent he paid. She lighted her cigaret and leaned over the balcony to see if anyone was directly below, where the ashes might fall on this windless afternoon.
“Is your mom driving you nuts, Marian?”
Turning to the left, Marian squinted and saw the daughter of the widow next door, seated alone on the next balcony, drinking some sort of pale iced beverage in a tall glass.
“Tom Collins—Kate?” she asked.
“I wish. Just lemonade—with a jigger of vodka—well, two jiggers, maybe.”
“If I didn’t have to drive my mother to a restaurant tonight, I’d probably be doing the same—instead of smoking out here.”
After slightly more than a minute of silence, Marian spoke again.
“You teach literature or something, don’t you? I think you said—Witherspoon? Am I remembering right—rightly?”
“Quitely rightly,” said Kate. “Witherspoon goest, so wilt knife follow. Yes—at Witherspoon ‘Cademy—for the Writing Impaired—and the Right-Wing Impaired.”
After another silence, Kate spoke: “Why did you ask—Miriam?”
“Marian. Mmm—no special reason. I happened to see the word ‘Witherspoon’ recently—in a poem of all places—and I guess—oh—literature and Witherspoon both together—and then seeing you out here—it just seemed like a coincidence.”
“Well—yes. What was the poem? I can’t imagine anyone putting Witherspoon Academy into verse—but I suppose Wordsworth did worse words than that—when he wrote about a stuffed owl in one of his poems. Where did you see it—Mmmarian?”
“Oh—I’m not sure. I don’t even think it was published. It might be something a friend showed me—recently—like typed up for sending out—to magazines?”
A loud rapid rapping on the glass of the balcony door startled Marian but gave her an excuse to avoid further questions about the poem. She turned toward the window and waved and then bent down to place her half-finished cigaret into a styrofoam cup of water between the door sill and the sheltered inner corner of the balcony.
“Well—Kate—Duty calls.”
“I knew it wasn’t Opportunity—‘cause that only knocks but once. See you next weekend, maybe—Marian.”
“You, too—Kate.”
She squinted again at Kate, recalling that she had an Irish-type name of some sort as well as reddish-auburn hair. And yet, she thought, she doesn’t LOOK Irish. Shrugging, she went into her mother’s apartment. She wet her lower lip and sniffed twice, rapidly. I guess we’re all mongrels—of some sort.
“I’m going to have a quick powder, Mother, and then we’ll head out, okay?”
“Just leave a quarter on the back of the toilet, dear,” said her mother with a small grin. After forty-seven years, this line still amused her.
2
At 9:37 the next morning, Sunday, Marian remembered her father’s poem and pulled the manila envelope out of her tote bag and tossed it on her coffee table. Then she refilled her coffee cup, set it on the table too, and plopped down onto her over-stuffed sofa. She had already read the first three pages of her Hartford Courant and had checked her e-mail to see what needed attention today and what could wait.
After nibbling her upper lip for several seconds, she drew the paper-clipped pages from the envelope and glanced with annoyance at the green sheet with its thinly veiled and probably duplicitous implication that a subscription would ensure future acceptances by the “editorial staff.”
It’s probably a staff of just one person—operating in his parents’ garage—or basement—despite the academic address, she thought, bitterly. She wondered how many other similar rejection slips her father had received, for this and for other poems, and what his thoughts about them had been. He once had been a rather satirical and witty person—at least as far as the knaves and fools of the world were concerned—but in recent years he seemed to have softened or mellowed—or gotten too tired to care, she knew not which. One of his final jokes had been to refer the senior living facility he was in as The Last Hurrah. He had been her favorite parent since early childhood, and she had sorrowfully watched his decline following her parents’ move to New Haven.
Marian took the paperclip off the pages and set the green sheet face down on the table.
“No—let’s do this right, Marian,” she suddenly said, standing. She balled up the green sheet and dropped it into the waste can in her kitchen. Then she took two lemon tarts out of her refrigerator, put them on a dinner plate, and warmed them for twenty seconds in her microwave oven. Back in her living room, she set her father’s poem on the cushion to her right, put her coffee on the end table to her left, placed the plate on her lap, and rested her fuzzy-slippered feet on her coffee table.
“Okay, Dad—let’s see what you were up to,” she said in a soft voice. She put her right hand on the poem and felt her heart seem to race. Her jaw muscles were tense and a little painful. She swallowed half of the thick saliva in her mouth and took a sip of her coffee. In the darkened gray screen of the television set opposite her, she could see her reflection.
“How bad can it be?” she whispered, shrugging long and hard to stretch her tense shoulders, then looked far to the left and far to the right to stretch her tense neck muscles. She took a deep breath, pushing it down into her abdomen, held it for seven seconds, and let it slowly out. “We shall see.”
She took a bite from one lemon tart, set it down, and picked up the poem.
“Golden Girl,” she said in a soft voice that was not a whisper. Then she read:
Golden Girl
(1965?-2001)
At the eighth ring, one of her co-workers
Picked up: “Witherspoon Library—how may
I help you?”