Seasoning: Part 2

“Are you a fan of the symphony? I have two tickets for Friday night.” Brian started to clear the table, tucking their paper napkins into the Styrofoam coffee cups.

“Your wife’s not a fan?” This was the opening Daisy had been waiting for. Was Brian married or not? He wasn’t wearing a ring but then a lot of men didn’t wear wedding rings, either because they never got one or they were divorced or their wives were dead.

“She used to be but now she’s in a memory care unit. She wouldn’t know a symphony from an apple at this point.” His voice sounded hard but his face told the story of a very sad man. Brian piled their plates on a tray and took them to the kitchen. He returned with a wet rag that he used to wipe down the table. Daisy was impressed by this, how thorough and careful he was, and wondered if he’d been like that before his wife went into memory care. Memory care. Honestly, why don’t they call it what it actually is? No memory care. Really, was there anything worse?

“It seems a little strange to accept an invitation from a married man, even if it’s just for the symphony. I mean…”

“What will people think? I don’t really care. Would it make you feel better if you met my wife, saw for yourself that she doesn’t know who I am or care?” Brian sat down, still holding the wet rag in his hand. “Life goes on, you know. I can’t live in sorrow all the time – before she dies and then after, which she will but God knows when.”

Had she overstepped? She’d just had meat loaf with this man and he was talking about his wife forgetting him and living in sorrow. Maybe it was too much but she didn’t care. She’d just come from drought after all, months of life that was featureless and deadly, deadly quiet.

“Okay. I’ll go with you to meet your wife. I’d be honored to meet her.”

Brian had been studying the wet rag in his hand, holding it like a sponge he’d just found in the sea. When she spoke, he put the rag on the table, flattened it out and then folded it into perfect fourths.

“Let’s go then.”

“Now? Right now?” It felt like a dare. Well, it could feel like a dare but it didn’t. It was more like someone asking her for a favor. Come see how my wife doesn’t know me, come be a witness, I’m not lying about it, this is what’s happening to me right now. Brian didn’t say these things but she heard them so she covered his hand with hers and said, “Okay. Let’s go.”

They checked in at the front desk of the memory care unit. Brian pulled an ID badge out of his khakis and snapped it on the pocket of his shirt then waited while the receptionist typed one up for Daisy. The receptionist pushed a button under the desk to open the unit doors.

It was as if a curtain raised on a scene from another place and time. Light streamed through floor-to-ceiling windows. Outside in what looked like a garden, dozens of birds gathered on birdfeeders hung on shepherd’s hooks. Residents sat at tables with crayons strewn about. A clock set at ten minutes to four lay in the middle of one table, an old-fashioned newspaper with headlines two inches tall on another. There was paper to draw on but no one was drawing. The six residents sat. One watched the birds, the others stared at their hands in their laps. One woman worked her index finger around her thumb over and over and over again. That was Brian’s wife.

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Watch for Seasoning: Part 3

Read Seasoning: Part 1

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Photo by Sonya Lynne on Unsplash