On the Saturday after she started her new job, it was Shirley’s first afternoon to pick up Thad and Cleo and keep them until noon on Sunday. At one o’clock, she pulled up in front of Steve’s condo and honked. Thad came out first, jacketless and with his hair uncombed, followed by Cleo, who was struggling under the weight of a pair of roller skates, a large red-haired doll, and a pink Barbie make-up set in a heart-shaped case.
“Hi,” said Thad, sliding across the back seat and pulling his Game Boy out of his shirt pocket.
“Hi,” said Shirley. “Please put on your seat belt before you start blowing things up.”
“It’s not World of Warcraft, it’s kickboxing,” said Thad, who operated the game device with one hand as he used the other to pull the shoulder belt across his chest and snap the buckle. “No explosions.”
Cleo grunted as she hurled her armload into the back seat. A pink-wheeled skate hit Thad in the ribs.
“Ow,” Thad said, not looking up from the game screen. “Mom, make her stop it.”
“Be careful, honey,” Shirley said to Cleo, who was already taking her shoes and socks off. “Please put your seat belt –“
“I know,” said Cleo, who took the time to roll her socks and tuck them into her sneakers before she tugged her shoulder belt, which didn’t move. The tension in her shoulder strap wouldn’t let her lean over to shut her door, so Shirley turned the engine off, got out, and went around the car to shut Cleo’s door from the outside, checking for fingers and toes before she slammed the door. She came back around and found that Thad, apparently engrossed in Ultimate Kickboxing Arena, had locked the driver’s door while she was out of the car. Shirley tapped on the glass. Thad appeared not to notice her.
In four steps, Shirley was around the back of the car. She had opened the tailgate, and was about to reach over the back seat to snatch the Game Boy when Thad unhooked his seat belt and quickly leaned forward over the front seat to unlock Shirley’s door.
Shirley climbed backwards out of the cargo bay, slammed down the trunk lid, and came around to her door. If he’s locked it again, she thought menacingly, but Thad hadn’t dared. He was quietly sitting in his seat, safely buckled, and considerately turning the Game Boy screen so Cleo could see his high score.
Shirley got into the driver’s seat, buckled her own belt, and started the car. She would call her sponsor tomorrow after the kids went back to Steve’s and Brenda would explain how this was all helping Shirley grow as a person. Maybe she would tell Shirley to write Thad’s practical jokes on the list of things beyond Shirley’s control or something spiritual like that. That spiritual something had to be better than any of Shirley’s thoughts, which at the moment drifted toward the happy life she could be living in a seaside cottage if she had not spent her youth, health, and money on two impossible children who threw skates at each other and locked her out of her own car.
“Okey-dokey,” Shirley said, looking up into the rear-view mirror, “Which one picked the movie last time?”
“Cleo,” said Thad.
“Thad,” said Cleo.
She’d set herself up for that. Shirley found a genuine laugh somewhere inside, and struggled to bring it to the surface. “We’ll go to Blockbuster and rent two videos,” she said pleasantly, “and then we can –“
“They don’t have videos there any more,” said Thad. “Didn’t you ever hear of a DVD? Do you even have a DVD player?”
“She probably has a dinosaur VCR,” said Cleo, giggling. “She probably has an old-fashion silent movie. She probably has a rock that she watches. She puts a rock on a table and she watches it!”
Thad and Cleo chortled and Shirley felt her true sense of humor trickle away. She forced out a few fake chuckles. “Well, let’s go see if Blockbuster has some pebbles to put into my rock player.”
The children stopped laughing and looked at each other.
“Pizza or spaghetti for take-out dinner?” asked Shirley unwisely, off-center and tumbling into the pit of controversy.
“Spaghetti,” said both Thad and Cleo, who both then looked appalled at having agreed by mistake. Thad brightened after a moment, and looked directly at Cleo. “Spaghetti’s really made of worms,” he said. “Squirmy –“
“Mom, make him –“ said Cleo, but Shirley had already found the oldies station on the radio and turned it up as loud as she could stand. She enjoyed the fact that both Thad and Cleo hated the oldies station, and she sang loudly, “Winchester Cathedral, you’re bringin’ me do-o-own. . .”
Shirley and the children made it through dinner – pizza, half cheese and half sausage – and watching both movies kept them up very late. So they all slept in, and barely had time for cereal and a short visit to the playground next to the library before it was time to get into the car and head back to Steve’s condo, after one circle around the block to retrieve Cleo’s left-behind Barbie makeup kit.
Shirley spent all of Sunday afternoon and all of Monday shampooing carpets at the new house. She’d intended to hang curtains, but after she returned the shampoo machine to Kroger and got her deposit back, she had only the energy to brush her teeth and set the alarm before falling into bed.
Tuesday morning, Shirley parked in the back row of the Wilbur Manor lot and just sat behind the wheel for a few moments. She dreaded balloon volleyball, but she dreaded her after-game visit to Madame – to Mrs. Grupetta more. If the old lady tried to kick her, was Shirley allowed to put up a hand to block the blow? What if Mrs. Grupetta wouldn’t let her change the bandage? It would be noticed when the next shift came on.
Shirley found that sitting in the front seat of a stuffy car, worrying, was actually worse than marching on in to work and getting that dumb volleyball net unfurled. She opened the driver’s door, climbed out of the car, took her purse from the passenger seat, and locked the door before she moved across the yellow-lined lot to the building entrance.
Balloon volleyball, to her surprise, went fairly smoothly. Doris, the balloon nabber, was absent, having gone with her daughter to eat breakfast at Waffle House. The regulars – Donald, husband of the woman who slept all day and all night, and Ruthie, of the smiles and “ok” sign – had showed up, along with Bess (a slow mover but a good swatter) and Beryl (who did tight showy turns in her wheelchair). This match had twice the usual amount of volleying, and in the last couple of minutes, a few cheers and shouts of “Got it!” echoed around Rec Area 2. The unusual level of enthusiasm had attracted Ted, the nurse from South Wing and a couple of the visitng physical therapists had come to stand in the doorway of the recreation room. When a fierce swatfest made the score 16-14 in the Blues’ favor, the staff came over to give high fives to Reds and Blues alike. Ted offered to wind up the volleyball net for Shirley, so she was able to get over to North Wing by 11:10. Tempted by the coffeepot in the Medical Station, she resisted and continued down the hallway. Mrs. Grupetta needed the foot check right away as she always started her accordion recital at exactly half past eleven.
Fortunately, Shirley found that she and Madame Grumpetta were working together under a pact of silence. Despite her earlier fears in the parking lot, Shirley had to admit that things had been much easier. Twice a day, Shirley came to Madame’s door and she would rap on the metal door frame three times. Then without saying anything, she would move into the eternal Christmas of Room 330 and check the old woman’s feet and toes or change the gauze pad on the inner side of the ancient right ankle. During these medical moments, Madame Grumpetta would simply pretend that Shirley did not exist. She held up La Gazzetta Italiana or Newsweek or 25 Christmas Decorating Projects You Can Make From Placemats, and Shirley never saw Mrs. Grupetta’s face at all. Some days the elderly woman didn’t bother to read, but simply stared at the windowsill where the brown bunnies held up the Christmas ribbon next to the tree-root Santa, keeping her eyes fixed there until Shirley finished and left the room. Sometimes Madame Grumpetta pretended to sleep, one soft-skinned arm lying over her forehead.
The silence was truly golden. Shirley was also glad, of course, not to be kicked or threatened. A tiny flame of hope rose in her. It was possible that she and Mrs. Grupetta could become friendlier. Then the resident in Room 330 might allow Shirley to sit on the extra bed some day at eleven-thirty and watch her accordion techniques, maybe pick up some tips, even. If Shirley could see how much fingertip Mrs. Grupetta placed on the keys, or whether she used a fingering system that was faster on the bass side, what a help that would be. She could get her playing up to her mother’s standard: a good quick tempo, very few mistakes.
Early in April, there’d been a little puff of encouragement to feed the flame of Shirley’s hope: Mrs. Grupetta had smiled just a tiny bit. The old woman had been amused one morning when Shirley showed up at Room 330 at 11:26, still wearing her striped referee shirt. She had been delayed at balloon volleyball because Doris had run out the front door of Wilbur Manor with a yellow balloon and tried to get on a city bus with it. Doris and the balloon were recovered safely, but Shirley had been forced to rush to the North Wing. She wasn’t sure if the accordionist was smiling at her striped shirt or her red face. Well, it was a start.
But within a few seconds, the smile disappeared as Shirley hurried through the foot check. For the next three or four days, she could not find even a faint acknowledgement that the old woman even she had entered the room. She gave up on ever learning the secret of good accordion playing. Then, on a Friday morning, she’d been surprised to hear Mrs. Grupetta play an overlapping call-and-response arrangement of “Queen of the Air March,” and she was baffled at how Madame could be running an arpeggio downward and be playing the melody upwards at the same time. After a moment, she wondered if Mrs. Grupetta could be playing duet-style with a recording. But when “Queen of the Air” ended and another duet, “My Florence Waltz,” began immediately, Shirley knew that a second accordionist had to be is Room 330.
Though she was supposed to be checking over the special-diet sheets for changes, Shirley left the paperwork on the Medical Station desk and found herself wandering toward the closed door of Mrs. Grupetta’s room. She stopped at a hall closet and rummaged till she found a tube of metal polish and a clean rag. Next she went to get the wheeled chrome cart used to deliver special-diet meals from the Dietary Department.
She pushed the ladder-like cart into the hallway just to the right of Room 330, and began busily polishing the metal slats. By stretching up just a little, she could peer between the rows of chrome bars, and sure enough, she saw a slender, slope-shouldered man with a brown suitcase in his hand emerge from Mrs. Grupetta’s room. Shirley remembered seeing him in the hallways before, but never with an accordion case.
“Goodbye, Evalina,” the man said as he paused in the doorway of Room 330 and looked back. “God be with you. Buona fortuna.” He closed the door behind him and slowly made his way toward Shirley and her chrome cart. Shirley draped the polishing rags over a shelf on the cart and eased herself into walking alongside the man, who was struggling a bit with the weight of the oversize suitcase. Shirley noted that his stride was uneven, and each heavy step on the accordion side seemed to cause him him pain.
“Hello, how are you?” said Shirley. “I’m going this way anyway. May I go get a dolly to roll your case out to the lobby? One of the floor aides can take it out to your car if you like.”
The man smiled, but didn’t say anything. Shirley gently reached for the case, and after a moment of hesitation, the man allowed her to grasp the handle and take on the weight. In front of them, a nurse’s aide was just parking an empty wheelchair against the wall of the hallway, and Shirley looked inquiringly at it. The aide smiled and stepped away from the wheelchair, and Shirley put the accordion case into the vinyl sling seat. “Mercy, this is heavy,” she said. “What kind of accordion is it?”
“Ah,” said the man. “Do you play?’
“A little,” said Shirley. They moved along the hallway, Shirley pushing the wheelchair with the accordion case in the seat. “I hear Madame -- Mrs. Grupetta playing in the mornings. Have you known her a long time? I’m Shirley Nilsson, by the way. I work on North Wing.”
“Carmen Scossi,” said the visitor pleasantly, smiling.
Shirley stopped, holding the handles of the wheelchair. There was a little squeak from the wheels. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, I didn’t recognize you. Mr Scossi! From – from Thursday night. . .get-togethers. I just didn’t expect to see you.”
“I wasn’t sure if it was you or not,” said Mr. Scossi. “I don’t know why not. You normally have your work uniform on when I see you.”
“I come right from work,” said Shirley. She began to push the wheelchair and Mr. Scossi walked along with her.
“So you want to know about my lady friend?” Mr. Scossi smiled. “I started taking lessons from Evalina in, let’s see. . .fifty-six. I had money from the Army and the government paid me to study musical instrument repair at the Italo-American Accordion Institute. Some institute, let me tell you. It was really just Evalina’s father’s shop. Evalina gave lessons in one of the rooms upstairs unless it was summertime and then it was too hot up there. On the hot days we’d have to chase her Papa out of his repair room and use that.”
They reached the lobby. “I don’t think we need a floor aide,” said Shirley, looking around. “Shall we just go ahead and run this out to your car?”
“My daughter will come by and pick me up,” said Mr. Scossi. “Thank you for your help.”
Shirley let go of the wheelchair handles and stepped back. Mr. Scossi took hold of the black vinyl grips and, limping slightly, he wheeled the accordion case out the double doors of the entrance, and paused at the curb.
Shirley followed him out to the Drop-Off/Pick-Up zone of the circle drive. “May I wait with you?”
“If you can stand the smoke,” said Mr. Scossi, taking a slender box of Tiparillos out of his jacket pocket. He shook one out, then pretended to offer the box to Shirley and they both laughed. Mr. Scossi flicked open an old-fashioned Zippo, spun the wheel against the flint until the flame rose, then took a deep pull of the flavored cigar smoke.
Shirley smiled at Mr. Scossi’s obvious enjoyment. “Do you think Mrs. Grupetta has always liked playing the accordion?” she asked.
“Liked it?” said Mr. Scossi. He shut the lid of the Zippo and pocketed it. “She never liked it. Just the family business. Her father offered every customer ten free lessons with a new model. He carried Hohner, Stradelli, and Silvestri -- I think Silvestri.” He sucked on his Tiparillo and graciously aimd the gray-blue smoke away from Shirley. The wind carried some of the sweet, strong aroma back.
“And Mrs. Grupetta gave the lessons?” Shirley turned to look through the glass door of the entrance in case she was needed, but no one seemed to be looking her way.
“Evalina was very pretty,” said Mr. Scossi. “That’s why I took the lessons after work. My pop had already showed me some of the old melodies and some of the bass figures he knew. Since I was eight years old. But Evalina that curly hair, and the big dark eyes, you know.” Mr. Scossi took one more drag on his Tiparillo, then carefully tapped the half-smoked slender cigar out on the brick wall of the building and put it into the box again. “My daughter won’t let me smoke,” he said. “I have to hide them.”
“Doesn’t she smell the smoke on your clothes?” said Shirley.
“Sure,” said the small man, shifting his weight and grimacing a little. “But I run a tavern so my clothes get smoky. Part of the job.” He smiled. “That Evalina, she was so pretty. Her father used to take her around to those USO canteen shows, you know, for the G.I.’s that just got home. The military police had to guard her. Those crazy men would try to jump on the stage and grab her. The MP’s would have to pull them down.”
“Enjoyed the attention, I imagine,” said Shirley.
“Oh no, she didn’t like show business at all,” said Mr. Scossi, shaking his head. “She was very shy. Oh, here’s Marta.” A blue Toyota Corolla pulled up in the circle drive.
Shirley, desperate for one last answer, said quickly, “Was she a good teacher?”
“Terrible,” said Mr. Scossi, grimacing as he lifted the accordion case from the seat of the wheelchair and carried it to the Toyota. He opened the rear door, then turned toward Shirley. “Very grouchy. The young kids that took the lessons used to call her names behind her back, like Grumpy and Grumpetta.” He lifted the accordion case and slid it onto the back seat, shut the rear door, and opened the passenger door. “It was very nice to talk with you, Miss Nilsson. Good afternoon.” He got into the car and waved once through the glass as the Toyota pulled away.
A couple of weeks later, Barbara, the North Wing nurse who’d taken Shirley through Orientation on her first day, came to ask Shirley to help with a project. The two of them had a busy morning getting the First Aid kits checked over before the county inspector came at the end of the week. The red plastic toolbox-style kits were lined up on two rolling carts, and Barbara was going through each kit as Shirley checked off the inventory list on a clipboard.
“I was thinking of going to the Latino Festival over at the fairgrounds for Cinco de Mayo,” said Barbara, looking through the contents of a red plastic box. She picked up an EpiPen and turned it to look for the expiration date. “Would you like to come with me?”
“Yes, I’d enjoy that,” said Shirley. “It’s on a weekend this year, isn’t it?”
“Yes, on a Saturday,” said Barbara.
“It’s nice of you to ask me,” said Shirley. She didn’t know anybody in her new neighborhood, and without the kids home to make plans around, she’d been sitting at home too much, or going to AA meetings more for the company than for any spiritual purpose. And when she came home after AA meetings, the house seemed emptier and lonelier than it had when she’d left for work.
Thad and Cleo hadn’t been at the Cape Cod often enough or long enough to leave many traces they’d ever existed. Shirley pushed two long bureaus into the middle of the upstairs room to divide it into two spaces. The area looked more like a motel suite on the last day of a summer vacation than like real bedrooms for a brother and sister. Cleo’s Barbie makeup kit sat on her Powerpuff Girls bedspread, and a toy cell phone sat on the lid of the kit. The toy phone was about half full of rainbow Skittles. Two purple Skittles and a yellow one were on the floor next to Cleo’s bed, and the yellow one had been stepped on. On Cleo’s bureau, a triangular bottle of silver glitter nail polish, without the lid on it, had become a tiny Art Deco sculpture. The covers from Thad’s bed were all bunched on the floor at the foot of his bed, with at least two pairs of pajamas swirled into the blankets and sheets. On Thad’s bureau, dust was gathering around a wrinkled blue sock, scattered pieces of a Lego robot, and the cardboard sleeve from the Game Boy product Bionic Commando.
“Now, Barbara, I’ll have the kids with me on Saturday,” said Shirley. “Their dad’s going to be out of town.” Which was true, though of course since it would be her visitation weekend it didn’t matter whether Steve was at home or in Paris, France. But no one at Wilbur Manor knew Shirley had lost custody of Thad and Cleo and it didn’t take real lying to keep that information private.
Barbara looked up from an open First Aid kit. “Your kids will love the festival,” said Barbara. “Maybe I’ll see if my granddaughter can come. The Youth Area has crafts and all this, and there’s dancing in fancy costumes, and food, and you know, the kids enjoy it. I think it’s good for them to see something a little new. All the different kinds of people, and the clothes, and the music and all.” She frowned into the red plastic box. “Here’s another roll of gauze tape we need. How many so far?”
Shirley ticked her pencil point down the inventory clipboard. “Five, I think. No, wait, six.”
Barbara sighed. “The nurses grab the tape out of the kits instead of going down the hall to the regular supply closet. But I know some of the Wings are short-staffed overnight, and all this.” She sighed again. “Well, I am looking forward to the Latino Festival, anyway. They have the best music there. The people dance. It’s Conjunto music, what they used to call Tex-Mex. Some of the bands just have a little cowboy guitar and one of those small accordions, just this size?” Barbara held an invisible instrument in the air, something a little larger than a toaster oven. “And it’s got buttons up and down it, you know what I mean?”
“Yes,” said Shirley. “A diatonic accordion. A button box.”
“Oh, that’s right,” said Barbara, smiling. “You’re the one who likes Madame Grumpetta’s music.”
“My mother played the accordion,” said Shirley. “She was really good too. Fast. I could never play fast like that.” She turned and looked down the hallway toward Room 330. “That’s funny.” She looked at her watch. “Three minutes after. The concert didn’t start.”
Barbara, wordlessly, put her coffee mug down on the Medical Station counter and, pulling her sweater tighter around her shoulders, hurried toward Madame Grumpetta’s room.
When Shirley got to the room, a few seconds after Barbara, it was hard to see what was going on. Ted, the nurse from South Wing, was in the doorway of Room 330, and behind him, two of the regular balloon volleyball players, Donald and Ruthie, were looking past Ted with concern.
When Ted saw Shirley, he moved a little to the right so that she could slip past him into Mrs. Grupetta’s room, then he moved back to keep Donald and Ruthie from leaning in too far.
Shirley saw that Barbara was speaking quietly and urgently to Mrs. Grupetta, who was standing near the windowsill, her back to the doorway, her fingers resting on the will near the tree-root Santa figure. On the rolling stand near the bed, Mrs. Grupetta’s breakfast tray was a disordered mess, with the cup of coffee tipped over and dribbling Folger’s into the scrambled eggs. The orange juice glass still wore the frilled paper cap over the top, but the oval metal steam cover which had been over the plate of eggs was now lying upside-down on the floor, a fallen spoon next to it.
At the window, Barbara was indicating the breakfast tray and she seemed to be repeating a question she’d asked more than once.
“Il bracchio,” said Mrs. Grupetta, rubbing her sweatered arm vigorously, then holding it toward Barbara. She turned, in frustration, toward Shirley. “Il bracchio.”
“Your arm?” said Shirley. “Is it bothering you?”
“Caldo,” said Mrs. Grupetta. She turned back toward Barbara. “Hot, it’s hot.” She swayed, and Barbara quickly stepped forward to help the elderly woman move to the bed and lie down. Then Barbara pushed a red button on a wall box mounted over the bed.
The stroke affected Mrs. Grupetta’s arm and hand, the left side of her face, and her speech. She lost most of her English, and when she spoke Italian, she stammered and stopped in the middle of her thoughts, confused. After she was released from the emergency room, she was kept at St. Anthony’s Hospital for a week, and then sent to a rehabilitation center indefinitely for both speech and physical therapy.
Shirley was surprised at how sad she felt a she watched Barbara and Ted pack up Mrs. Grupetta’s Christmas items. The tree-root ornaments were wrapped in brown paper and tucked into Rubbermaid tubs along with the snowflake sweaters, Santa-face slippers, and back issues of La Gazzetta Italiana. The storage tubs and the large floral bundle which had the magical, unseen accordion at its heart were carried by a parade of floor aides out to the curved Drop-Off/Pick-Up driveway and then shoved into the back of a delivery van driven by Mrs. Grupetta’s nephew. Both beds in Room 330, the one used for sleeping and the one used for storage, were stripped, and just like that, Madame Grumpetta was gone from Wilbur Manor.
Shirley didn’t miss risking the bridge of her nose during the foot checks, of course, and since, she told herself, she would be leaving the job after the custody hearing anyway, it made no sense to get overinvolved in the patients’ lives. Yet Shirley felt oddly lonely without Mrs. Grupetta and the mid-morning accordion concerts.
Mr. Quo, a man with respiratory problems, moved into Room 330. A week later, a young woman whose name Shirley thought might be Miriam or Mary Ann, was given the other bed. The co-ed arrangement was unusual for Wilbur Manor but Mr. Quo could not leave his breathing machine and his female roommate had never woken after brain surgery two years before.
“La Paloma” and “The Jolly Coppersmith” were replaced with the roar of The Game Show Network turned up very loud over the hiss and thump of Mr. Quo’s breathing machine. To avoid the change in familiar sounds, Shirley now went the long way around her North Wing route. Her nerves couldn’t take too much of “Congratulations, Paula, you’ve made it to the Bonus Round!” instead of “Helena Polka.” Shirley spent more and more of each work shift telling herself that she’d be done with it all soon.
-- story continues in Part 3 -->
