Final Stroke Read Online Free PDF Page A

the business office.
    The wildest conspiracy theory of all was the one Marjorie im plied had taken place some time back during a Presidential election. In this one, elderly residents were lined up in the hallway on election day, and the candidate they should vote for down at the polling place in the lobby was printed in ink on the insides of their dry old palms. One of the older aides in rehab overheard Marjorie trying her best to divulge this conspiracy. After waiting patiently for Marjorie to get all the “facts” out, the aide let it be known that, as far as she knew, Hell in the Woods had never had its lobby used for a polling place. Yet after the aide left them alone, Marjorie insisted there was something terribly wrong about the outcome of a Presidential election. He never did find out which election because Marjorie changed the subject, as usual, telling him about her family.
    Marjorie spoke often of her husband Antonio, things like his busi ness and his foul language. “Fuck the Pope,” he’d say. And so Mar jorie said, “Fuck the Pope.” And when people heard this they’d smile and Marjorie would smile and, of course, he would out-smile them all. Maybe he even smiled when Marjorie told about her husband being found shot to death in the trunk of his car. Who the hell knew when the exuberant neurons that survived the ransacking of his brain would come out of hiding and do their smiley-face trick?
    Or maybe it was all a dream. Steve Babe, the happy son of a bitch on his back in bed—You’re on your back. Almost awake. A dream is still there. Two, maybe three things you want to be sure to remember. Sure, you’ll remember. But then, the second your feet hit the floor it all begins to fade. You awaken with a vague recollection of having dreamed, but the details are lost through the net around your head, the net that was supposed to keep the details in. According to Marjo rie, that’s what it was like after her stroke.
    Marjorie told these things not only to him, but also to Jan—It is evening, down on the first floor, calling on Marjorie at her room, es corting her to the wing’s television lounge. The three of them sitting in an alcove at the back of the room while other nursing home resi dents stare open-mouthed at an episode of Star Trek’s newest genera tion. Marjorie sits between them on a sofa, two wheelchairs parked illegally like Klingon vessels in an aisle between coffee table and side chair so that a male aide named Pete eventually moves the chairs against the wall. Marjorie speaks to both him and Jan but leans more toward him as if his brain will fill in the clipped phrases in the cartoon balloon above her head. When she says, “Choo-choos smoking like El Producto,” he can almost hear the toy trains in the basement and smell Antonio Gianetti’s cigar and hear the thump of barbells on carpet. After Marjorie says a few more words, he says, “Goodness gracious,” and it is as if he has become her, their minds melded by old Spock into one complete mind. Jan joins in laughing with them, three conspira tors eyed by the elderly Star Trekkers nearby, the three of them howl ing with glee, he and Jan hugging Marjorie from opposite sides but also hugging one another in this moment of joy.
    Sometimes when Jan visited, she wheeled Steve down to the televi sion lounge on his floor. Not so they could watch television, but be cause of the windowed alcove overlooking the entrance and the park ing lot and the woods that surrounded the place. The alcove reminded Steve of the living room at his and Jan’s apartment in Brookfield. Al though Jan had since moved into a wheelchair-friendly apartment on the first floor in preparation for his arrival home, the new apartment was directly below the old apartment and shared the same view. Like the windows in this alcove, it looked out at parking lot and woods be yond. The Brookfield Zoo was near the apartment complex hidden beyond a small wooded area. Sometimes on still