Wear and Tear: Icon of an Eastsider

Gerald Coleman

Louise McLaughlin begins to speak to whomever it is has entered her room, at a moment she hadn’t noticed. The room’s temperature is set for an ancient lady striving but failing to get warm.

“My dear, we really lose everything in life from hairpins to health. I’m losing everything just now.”

She lifts the remote control off her bed, shuts off the television, and tosses the controller carelessly next to herself on the top quilt. “None of that matters now, NONSENSE, can’t tell what they’re showing half the time with a tickertape always at the bottom of the screen. Screens within screens, like a play within a play. Remember Hamlet?

“I pretend to hear better than I really do, pretending feels better than admitting that it’s gone.

“This old body, I should introduce myself as Louise McShambles, she leaks and creaks, even the porchlight is flickering, I’m beyond a fixer upper.

“The staff turnover here can’t be a good sign, rough bunch they are.

“I was a nurse for years, but given all that, there is no special care for me even as a veteran of medicine. I should have drunk more Guinness.” Her eyes begin to blink and then after fifteen seconds: “I am thinking of patients with whom I was impatient, maybe it’s purification, God saying: ‘Why do you deserve any better missy?’

“I lost my years, the time to get married, the childbearing days, now my apartment. I had a good salary and a rent-controlled place, but this place will eat it all up in no time. I remember my grandmother more than 70 years ago setting a fine table, linen and silver.” She wags her finger in the air. “‘Now girls don’t eat so quickly, savor it.’ And we giddy fools scarfed it down, now my appetite is gone too.”

She strokes fingers-full of long grey hair. “I had my last trip to the beauty parlor without benefit of knowing it was the last one, I wonder if my hairdresser will wonder what happened to me, I was a good tipper.

“Macdonald Carey’s voice is always in my head,” - she deepens her voice - “‘Like sands through an hour glass…’ We hope one grain might remain at the top, maybe it can’t really be without the others. I feel like I’m sliding like a sand grain, and inside it is a little anxious and exhilarating like sledding on snow. The only experience I have now is to avoid too much pain and make it to the toilet.” She starts to laugh. “‘Wow, wow this is a trip!’ My hobby is exhausting cliches.”

Suddenly she is quiet, staring toward the floor, but at nothing. “Thanks for hearing me out, I guess I shouldn’t be hard on the girls, they aren’t waving goodbye to it all yet, but oh they will have to. Talk about slipping on a banana peel!” She looks blankly around the white sunny room. “I hope you can arrange for me to go back to my apartment for some warm sweaters, it just gets colder in here.”

Louise rocks on the edge of the bed and sniffs and fluffs her hair and rubs the arms of her hoodie. “I’m like an old hobo on the Bowery at this point and I don’t ever have trash to burn or a flask to swig. You will find out, we let go, it is what happens, we lose every grasp.”

Looking toward a shadow in the room, “Could you arrange for a priest to come in? I can still have Holy Communion.” Then beyond the window pane a coo and fast flutter, the visitor seems to have made a fast departure and the room brightens a little. Turning her head toward the door Louise shouts: “Thank you for listening!”

Gerald Coleman writes from New York.