Final Stroke Read online

  An organ joke emerged from way back when she was a little girl attending Saint Pius School on the south side. One of the nuns chas ing a newly arrived young priest around and around the inside of the church … until she catches him by the organ. That was a good one. Maybe she’d tell that one to Mr. Babe. But as soon as she tried to imagine the words she’d say to him, the nun chased the priest out from behind the organ and they ran up to the side altar where baptisms are performed—her son baptized there—and in his frenzy to escape, the priest, who resembles the young man leading her down the hallway, overturns a bottle, and someone screams, “The Ointment!” and the term “fly in the ointment” comes into her noggin and for some reason takes over and all she can think is There’s a fly in the ointment. There’s a fly in the ointment!

  They were outside the activity room now, she and the young man standing arm-and-arm like … like her father holding her arm at the back of Saint Pius church while Antonio waits at the altar. Anto nio, her husband-to-be. Antonio, who was called Tony by everyone but her. Antonio, who, despite his businesses and his associates and what the newspapers said about him, was a good family man. Hadn’t he seen to it she’d be comfortable for the rest of her life with a pri vate room at Hell in the Woods? Hadn’t he even gone so far as to make certain his heirs for generations to come would be comfortable? Hadn’t he once wept because his only son had not wed and did not yet have children?

  If only that bitch of a newspaperwoman who wrote the article after Antonio’s death could have seen him weep. Perhaps then she wouldn’t have called Antonio, “a cigar-smoking mobster from the old school who played with his train layout after Mass on Sundays and ordered his thugs to do his bidding the other six days of the week.”

  As she stood within her walker recalling Antonio—how he had begun going bald soon after their marriage and never wore a hair piece—she tried to remember if the young man accompanying her was bald, but could not. Men in Antonio’s family went bald early. In the Gianetti family album there were faded photographs of bald young men back in the old country. But then there was lots of thinning hair in this modern world, especially here at Hell in the Woods where even the women have thinning hair. Sometimes she’d look down at the floor and expect to see wads of it like elongated wads of dust beneath a bed, the wads of dust her mother called dust bunnies.

  Why could she remember some things and not others? Like now, standing within her walker while the young man pauses, why was she again recalling one of Antonio’s tirades from earlier in their mar riage? Was it because she worried that the words spoken aloud would awaken Antonio Junior, then just a baby? Was that why she recalled every word?

  “It’s a fuckin’ crazy world, Marge. Nothing’s simple like the old days. In the old days they used a little muscle and got what they wanted. Muscle in those days wasn’t always the bullet. Some of the boys would have fisticuffs. But today the only muscle they got is a high-powered rifle or a dead guy in the trunk of his car. It’s like the damn cold war. Only here, instead of bombs, they got this idea that if a guy pushes too hard, into the trunk he goes with a bullet in his head… Hey, maybe if they gave it to Carter the way they gave it to JFK… Ah, what the hell. It’s a crazy world. A fuckin’ crazy world.

  “And another thing. They think I’m fuckin’ stupid or something? Those Turks and that fuckin’ Spilotro think I’m stupid? Those New York hoods playing around with their garbage businesses think I’m stupid? I’m not stupid! They’re the ones that’re fuckin’ stupid! Even the old timers are goin’ along. While I stay here in Daley’s Mick town runnin’ a business more honest than city hall, Accardo’s kissin’ up to the stars in Palm Springs! And the Greek, he’s layin’ on the fuckin’ beach thinkin’ he can call the shots long distance!”

  Whenever Marjorie smiled at Antonio calling his business an hon est business, or whenever she complained about his foul language, he’d simply wave his hand at her and keep it up, keep it up until there was a moment of silence and she said something about his claim to be a good Catholic and … yes, several times she’d said it, “If the Pope could hear you now,” and he’d said, “Fuck the Pope!”

  Or was it, “Fuck Jimmy Carter,” that he said? She recalled him not liking Jimmy Carter. She recalled thinking years later that, if Antonio had lived long enough, he would have really hated Clinton.

  Another thing she thought Antonio might have said was, “Fuck Chernobyl.” But why would he have said that? How could he have said that? And really, did Antonio actually say any of these things, or was it all simply part of the mix-up, the bowl of mashed potatoes that was her brain since the stroke? Maybe even the word fuck came from the mix-up, because fuck did seem to be an awfully popular word here at Hell in the Woods. According to Mr. Babe there was a man on the third floor who only said the two words Jesus fuck. Nothing else ex cept Jesus fuck.

  Despite things he’d said about the Pope and Jimmy Carter when he was alive, her Antonio was still a good man. And despite every thing the brain bullet had taken from her, no one could take that away from her. She had the definite impression that, behind Antonio’s anger with his so-called “business partners,” there was a plan. She had the feeling that what Antonio planned, during those last years they had together, would be something wonderful. Perhaps that was the family secret, that Antonio had planned a legacy for which the name Gianetti would be remembered.

  Wait. Something was happening. The young man had left her standing in her walker outside the double doors to the activity room. The young man had let go of her arm and stepped away from her. She heard a door open somewhere behind her. Then there was a hissing sound, and a singing. No, that would be silly because who would sing like that? But it was a singing, a singing like in the pipes at home when Antonio was in the shower. Antonio also singing, trying to outdo the singing of the plumbing with his valiant attempt at Verdi.

  When the singing stopped and the door behind her closed, the young man was back at her side. No, behind her. She thought he would begin speaking again the way he had when he came to her room to fetch her. She thought he would again begin asking questions that made no sense. Even if she had understood the questions, how could he expect her to answer?

  But he did not speak, he did not pump her with questions. In stead, he held her gently by her arms, easing her backward and lifting her arms so that she released her grip on the walker. Then he turned her about. He did not stop the turning so she could face him, so she could look at him, but instead kept turning her. Around and around. In a way it was like dancing, but too fast, so fast she became dizzy. Then she felt him grip her ankles and felt herself flying through the air, the whole world spinning. A rather pleasant sensation until her head hit the floor.

  After that was a brief dream. A dream about her husband Antonio and her son Antonio. Both were younger. They were in the garden behind the house, the garden she had always assumed had given her son his love of nature. She watched from within the arbor where it was dark because of the thick vines overhead. In the distance she could hear the sprinkler oscillating back and forth spraying the ferns and tinkling on some of the smaller clay pots along the walkway. It was springtime and Antonio Junior was being thrown into the sunshine by his father. Antonio Junior screaming with delight, Antonio Junior blinded by childish pleasure, Antonio Junior not knowing what would some day be done to his mother, how much pain would be inflicted upon his mother in the name of …

  In the name of what? Why would he do this to her? Why would anyone do this to her? Was it the keys? My God! Who would take care of the keys!

  As the screams of Antonio Junior being thrown into the air by his father died away, Marjorie Gianetti realized that her husband Anto nio must have known this would happen. Yes, he must have known it would one day lead to this.

  Then the image in the garden faded, and so did Marjorie Gianetti.

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  Steve Babe was doing stroke time. It was enough to make a guy laugh his head off. But
still, he couldn’t help wondering what had caused it. Maybe it was the Hungarian paprikas—onion sau teed in bacon drippings, red paprika, sliced beef or cut up chicken with gizzards, dumplings—or the baked goose liver—a milk-soaked two-pounder, goose fat, onion, paprika, salt—or the sour cream pan-cakes—eggs, flour, milk, sugar, salt, butter, sour cream, extra egg yolks. Or maybe it was his failure to exercise adequately during his first fifty years. Or maybe it was in his genes. Whatever the cause, he was definitely doing stroke time.

  Besides the immobility of his right side, the first thing Steve was aware of after his stroke was that he often found himself thinking he wanted to say something but was unable to say it. Case in point—he loved the word case. An important word, reminded him of the past. A man with cases. A Sergeant-Joe-Friday-kind-of-guy turning over stones until all the pieces to the puzzle are there on a table in the rehab center. No, not in the rehab center, not rehab puzzles designed to bridge the canyons left when brain cells wash out to sea like in the Mississippi delta. Different kinds of puzzles way back when he was an ex-cop but still had cases. Case in point on this business about not being able to come up with the right words at the right time was what to say to Brenda, the evening nurses’ aide, when she told him Marjorie Gianetti had moved upstairs.

  He’d wanted to tell Brenda about Marjorie being a fine lady and that he was sorry to hear about her moving upstairs. He wanted to say he wept yesterday when he saw a car being towed in the parking lot and wondered why he could not weep now. He wanted to say he knew damn well what was meant in this place by someone moving upstairs and that it had nothing to do with the floors in the building. He wanted to say he had enough trouble with words and hated the fact that nobody around this place had the guts to use the word dead. But most important of all, he wanted to say there was something fishy about Marjorie’s death because of something she’d said to him a few days earlier.

  “Mr. Babe,” she’d said, reaching out from her wheelchair to the arm of his wheelchair and putting her hand on his, “intermediate and skilled hard tile floors are beaners. Bullshit accidents don’t happen. Fuck the Pope and Medicaid gets the yolks.”

  Only after they finished laughing—his habit of smiling at every thing like a demented clown having caused the laughter in the first place—did he manage to figure out what she meant. If she could, Marjorie might have said something like, “The reason they have hard tile floors in intermediate and skilled wings is obvious. Residents being incontinent and accidents that might ruin the carpet are bullshit rea sons. They have tile floors so if one of us falls there’s a better chance it’ll be our last, and that saves Medicaid a bundle.” He wasn’t sure whether the mention of egg yolks had to do with the fragility of the residents, but he knew, by repeated hand signs she had used, that the yolk was the richest part of the egg and her mention of it was an allu sion to money.

  Marjorie was old enough to be Steve’s mother, and she had in deed adopted him on his first day at Hell in the Woods—He and Jan being given a tour of the group therapy rehab center when Marjorie caterpillar-walks out of the elevator, using her heels to pull her wheel chair along. She merges in beside him like a commuter merging into rush hour traffic. She is short with a hump between her shoulders. Despite her age, black strands of hair are mixed in with the gray, the outer strands lifting in the breeze as she accompanies him down the hall that first day. With her hair brushed back Madonna style, she reminds Steve of an Italian mama whose portrait adorns a jar of spa ghetti sauce.

  Although Marjorie had difficulty getting the words out, she man aged, “Gianetti, Marjorie, wife of Antonio. Pleased to meet.” She then turned her wheelchair toward Jan and said she was also pleased to meet Jan.

  Besides meeting Marjorie for the first time, two other things stuck in Steve’s ragtag memory of that morning. The first was the fact that when Jan pushed his wheelchair down halls and into elevators, and finally into his room, he could not see who was pushing him and be came frightened that Jan no longer existed. The second was the fact that, when they arrived on the third floor, his name was posted next to his door on an awfully permanent-looking placard, but one which, when more closely examined, proved to be not-so-permanent because, although the name was stenciled into a fake wood-grain card, the card could be easily slid out of its holder when the time came to either leave or, as residents and staff liked to put it, move upstairs.

  Marjorie Gianetti was a resident in Saint Mel’s nursing home wing.

  Although attached to Saint Mel’s main building, the nursing home’s single-story wing stuck out from the main multistory structure and, from some vantage points, actually disappeared into the woods. Some at the center claimed Saint Mel’s got its nickname, Hell in the Woods, from a clever nursing home resident observing staff members trudge in from the staff parking lot hidden off in the woods behind the nurs ing home wing. Another theory about the nickname was that the facility was already completed when a rare storm with southeasterly winds blew up and jets from O’Hare Field began taking off directly overhead. Yet another theory referred to incidents in which nursing home residents walked out the loading dock entrance when an errant worker propped open the alarmed door. In each case the walkaway failed to get anywhere because of the chain-link fence surrounding the place. The only opening in the fence was at the main entry road some distance from the nursing home wing on the opposite side of the main building, further fueling nursing home residents’ insistence that the name be changed from Saint Mel in the Woods Rehabilitation Facility to, simply, Hell in the Woods.

  During Steve’s first few minutes in the place, the same nurses’ aide who revealed its nickname said Marjorie Gianetti made a point of greeting new stroke victims at the facility whether they were older and moving into the nursing home wing, whether they were younger and moving into the rehab facility, or whether they were in critical condi tion at any age and moving into the skilled care hospice facility. While accompanying Steve and Jan to his room—speaking exclusively to Jan in a way that made Steve feel he already had at least a foot, if not a leg, arm, and right testicle in the grave—the nurses’ aide said Marjorie got the names of incoming stroke victims from the rehab center’s updated strokers list and was a self-appointed den mother to incoming stroke victims. According to the nurses’ aide, one had to take a lot of what Marjorie said with a grain of salt and try to ignore her curses concern ing the Pope.

  Later, after Steve attended several stroker sessions and got to know Marjorie—and especially after she found out he’d been a Chicago cop, then a private investigator—Marjorie began telling him about her suspicions of devious goings-on at Hell in the Woods. She’d say things like, “Mr. Babe, cushy TV floor heads are okay, otherwise, cab bage meals on wheels for me,” which actually was a continuation of her hard-tile-floor-Medicaid conspiracy theory that meant something like, “That’s why I only walk where it’s carpeted. If I take a fall I know this old head of mine will bear the brunt of it. When I’m in the hall ways I stay put in my chair so I won’t fall and bust my noggin open like a cabbage.”

  Maybe because he smiled so much, Marjorie told him all kinds of crazy things. Things like overmedication during state inspections and a resident named Janine steeped in the whirlpool like a tea bag. A conspiracy theory about stolen equipment sold back to the place by a medical supply company that acted as a front for the Catholic Church—and they thought the money was all from real estate. Hor ror stories about skilled-wing patients being eased ever so closer to the grave by the bean counters in 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 “f
acts” 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.